Dramatic acting debut of Britney Spears, that Pied Piper of Girl Power. It definitely gives the pop star more latitude than her Pepsi commercials, to which homage is paid when she sashays past the vending machine at a gas station. But that's just another way of saying more rope with …
The story of three childhood friends, Lucy (Britney Spears), Kit (Zoe Saldana) and Mimi (Taryn Manning), who, after eight years apart, rediscover their friendship on a cross-country trip. With barely a plan, practically no money but plenty of dreams, the girls catch a lift with Mimi's handsome friend Ben (Anson …
The story of three childhood friends, Lucy (Britney Spears), Kit (Zoe Saldana) and Mimi (Taryn Manning), who, after eight years apart, rediscover their friendship on a cross-country trip. With barely a plan, practically no money but plenty of dreams, the girls catch a lift with Mimi's handsome friend Ben (Anson …
Catholic-school hellions in the 1970s. Peter Care's handling of alienated youth falls somewhere between Larry Clark and John Hughes, though it's not a fixed position: there's an uncertainty of tone and intent. Todd McFarlane's animated sequences, bringing the kids' superhero fantasies to fruition, tend toward flattery, but the performances of …
Nameless, malevolent forces dim the lights in an isolated country house, pilfer the colored pencils of the current residents' youngest child, and inflame the nervous condition of the man of the family. Prosaically scripted, pallidly photographed, frenetically edited thriller from Spanish filmmaker Jaume Balagueró, but spoken in English in a …
Garishly dark comedy, if that's imaginable, set in the cutthroat world of children's television. KidNet's star attraction, Rainbow Randolph, is exposed as a "degenerate scumbag," forcing the network to replace him with foursquare Smoochy the Rhino: "He's a bottle of pancake syrup with legs." Danny DeVito directs him to death, …
Corporate espionage in the slimy world of cybersex. Writer-director Olivier Assayas sidles up to the skulduggery in casual fashion, dallies among the ambiguities and amoralities, never really hits his stride. The Danish-born Connie Nielsen (who has made movies in France before) and the American Chloë Sevigny speak impeccable French, and …
American documentary on French deconstructionist Jacques Derrida: at home, at conferences, in classrooms, in interviews. With all the unavoidable distractions of the image, the film is less useful as a means of appreciating Derrida's thought than of appreciating his photogenic handsomeness: corona of white hair, nut-brown skin, a lived-in face, …
Puttery, ploddy character piece centered around a travelling jewelry salesman in provincial Pennsylvania ("I have relationships. These go back decades," he says in his best Willy Loman impression), who must break in his youthful replacement. There's a hopeful stretch dealing with teaching, learning, bonding, but this soon gives way to …
It is now (ahem) four decades since James Bond made his debut on screen, never mind another decade since his debut on the page: he must, as a film entity alone, be into his seventies by now. However you calculate it, he can ill afford to spend fourteen months in …
Misanthropic comedy from Palestine about hostilities and conflicts both intramural and across the Israeli border. It permits us if nothing else to reacquaint ourselves with the pleasures of composition, perspective, camera angle, the filmmaking basics. A tetchier Tati, director Elia Suleiman (who also appears as the, or a, central character) …
The title alone told you that you needed to read no further in the Rebecca Wells novel. But the screen version, written and directed by Callie Khouri, temptingly makes room for one of our premier performers, Ellen Burstyn, in addition to Fionnula Flanagan, Maggie Smith, and Shirley Knight, troupers one …
Agents of Heaven and Hell -- Victoria Abril and Penelope Cruz, respectively -- are sent to Earth to fight over the soul of a boxer. The plane of the action is mostly mundane (labor unrest, domestic tension), but the actresses supply much gusto (or to the viewer, mucho gusto), and …
Guy Maddin's spinoff of, or takeoff from, a Mark Godden production for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. The Canadian filmmaker has retained several remnants of dance (along with an Asian Count Dracula and nonstop excerpts from the first two Mahler symphonies), but not enough of them for the film to be …
Communication-from-beyond-the-grave chiller. Kevin Costner loses his wife in a Venezuelan bus mishap, searches the river in vain for her body, attends her memorial service, and performs a C-section that same day on a deceased mother in the ER, all before the end of the opening credits. A total nonbeliever ("When …