A Portrait of the Artist as a Very Old Man. There has always been a healthy dollop of death surrounding Swiss artist H.R. Giger, whose great (and worthy) claim to fame is the biomechanical design work he did for Ridley Scott's Alien. And mortality is very much in attendance during …
Simple-minded simplification of a wonderful Conrad tale about two officers in Napoleon's army who engage each other in a series of duels over a period of years. The duels are shot in a panicked manner that does not allow you to appreciate the action, and the rest of the scenes …
Well, at least they got the biblical proportions right: the massive Egyptian monument industry, the vast peoples and vaster landscapes, and most importantly, the God-sized plagues and waves. Otherwise, Ridley Scott's take on the great contest between Moses and Pharoah is underwhelming and ill-conceived. First, the underwhelming: nearly everyone — …
Rome's greatest general, Maximus, reduced to a slave (Minimus, that would be), then resurrected as a star of the sporting arena (not necessarily Circus Maximus). Throwback historical epic with all the modern amenities: overamplified digital sound, computer-generated sets, blue-rinsed and butter-basted photography, herky-jerky hallucinatory slow-motion, time-lapse clouds, music-video-style dream scenes, …
Years after witnessing the death of Maximus at the hands of his uncle, Lucius must enter the Colosseum after the powerful emperors of Rome conquer his home. With rage in his heart and the future of the empire at stake, he looks to the past to find the strength and …
Years after witnessing the death of Maximus at the hands of his uncle, Lucius must enter the Colosseum after the powerful emperors of Rome conquer his home. With rage in his heart and the future of the empire at stake, he looks to the past to find the strength and …
Self-betterment swill, to do with a cutthroat London bond trader (Russell Crowe, disconcertingly fey) who inherits from his uncle a rundown wine-growing estate in Provence, the happy stamping ground of his boyhood holidays, and who, returning there to sell the place, falls again under its spell -- and under that …
Sequel to The Silence of the Lambs: long, slow, eventually revolting; less a fright film than an anguish film; somber, overinflated, operatic (it stresses the "grand" in Grand Guignol); no doubt a disappointment to people who actually wanted a sequel; of little interest to people who didn't. It could have …
Let the grand guignol begin as Ridley Scott goes to camp in his first feature since swapping out Gettys in the scandal-plagued All the Money in the World. Once again the focus is on a notorious clan piloted by a gaggle of pricey lookalikes. Offscreen, Scott’s a stitch, but the …
This works hard to obscure the fact that it is a vampire movie (the fearful word is never uttered). But it will not manage to fool those who don't care for this sort of thing, and will manage only to irritate those who do. The maintenance of a Beautiful People …
Or, One More Reason Why the Middle East Hates the West. Back, back, back to the 12th Century, back to before the Third Crusade ("To kill an infidel is not murder, it is the path to heaven"), equipped with cultural relativism, vats of blood, miles of slow-motion, and wave after …
Wagnerian comic book: a primeval forest (with Maxfield Parrish-ish atmospherics), a pair of unicorns, pointy-eared elves, pointy-nosed agents of darkness, and naturally "a champion, bold of heart and pure in spirit." It's a thing to delight the very very innocent and a thing to depress the even very slightly sophisticated. …
Wagnerian comic book: a primeval forest (with Maxfield Parrish-ish atmospherics), a pair of unicorns, pointy-eared elves, pointy-nosed agents of darkness, and naturally "a champion, bold of heart and pure in spirit." It's a thing to delight the very very innocent and a thing to depress the even very slightly sophisticated. …
Kids: stay in school, especially if you plan on becoming an astronaut. When a freak accident (wind-loosed antenna piercing bio-monitor) leads to his being stranded on the red planet, astro-botanist Matt Damon decides he ain't got time to muse on fate, the fragility of existence, or man's place in the …