It may be an advantage not to be an X-File-o-phile. If, like me, you have seen no more than a handful of episodes from the nine-season TV series, and you have only the vaguest recollection …
July 30, 2008
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Stories by Duncan Shepherd
Reason to Believe
The Dark Knight clocks in
When the smoke clears, The Dark Knight should emerge as just another comic-book movie, the fourth of the summer (Hancock wasn’t based on a comic book too, was it?), avowedly “darker” than the others, certainly …
July 23, 2008
Cultural Contamination
If Tell No One does not give us what we expect and want from a French thriller, part of the reason must lie in its source, an American mystery novel by Harlan Coben. I read …
July 16, 2008
Look! Up in the Sky!
Two ideas has Hancock. The first may be summed up in the term “anti-superhero,” or if you prefer it, “super-antihero.” The hero, that is to say, possesses the full complement of comic-book superpowers. Even though …
July 2, 2008
World Gone Mad
The advent of a Dario Argento film is an undoubted occasion, whether or not one to celebrate. Not since 1991, by my records, has one of his films circulated in American theaters, and only then …
June 25, 2008
Woman on a Mission
The Gaslamp 15 still bears keeping an eye on. Hopefully this won’t turn into a deathwatch, though I note that the hours of operation have been scaled back on weekdays to a late-afternoon start, a …
June 11, 2008
Bite-Sized
The men behind You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, who would include director Dennis Dugan and producer-writer-star Adam Sandler, must be holding their collective breath in hopes that, before or during its opening weekend, no …
June 4, 2008
To Have and Have More
The question fomented by the new Indiana Jones film was whether or not, nineteen years after the last one, Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg still “have it.” Which of course begs the question of whether …
May 28, 2008
A Second Coming
As we ease into the lazy summer pace of one blockbuster per week, we also settle into the provincial screening schedule of forever lagging a week behind. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal …
May 21, 2008
Mixed Bag
To say the least, Speed Racer is colorful. Color-overflowing, to say a little more. Color-engulfed. The live-action version of the late-Sixties made-in-Japan TV cartoon (which I never saw) is of course, in our day and …
May 14, 2008
Reds
Call me an ingrate, but I cannot suppress the comment that Landmark Theatres have finally found a slot for Hou Hsiao-hsien only after the Taiwanese filmmaker made a film in France and in French, and …
May 7, 2008
Thing to Ponder
Under the imprimatur of Judd Apatow comes Forgetting Sarah Marshall, a comedy of heartbreak and heartmend. Apatow personally has directed only The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, but as a producer his name apparently has …
April 16, 2008
Double-Barrel
Should anyone be suffering symptoms of withdrawal as the “Seen on DVD” column gears down from weekly to monthly, let me share the latest accretions to my own spotty collection. I don’t purchase DVDs often …
April 9, 2008
Stones
It takes a bit of cheek to call a film Flawless. Especially a Demi Moore film. In it, she carries that affixed chip on her shoulder into the role of the sole female executive at …
March 26, 2008
North and South
Two Mondays ago I saw two films. In the morning was the advance screening of the American indie, Snow Angels, scheduled to open locally a week from Friday. I should probably, by custom, wait till …
March 19, 2008
Found in Translation
Attention all masochists. Funny Games is not what it sounds like. Not fun and games, not funny ha-ha, not charades and Mad Libs. It is Michael Haneke’s English-language remake of his own Austrian film of …
March 12, 2008
All the King's Women
Extracted from a fat Philippa Gregory novel (the novel, that is, is fat), The Other Boleyn Girl doles out yet another installment in the long-running royal soap opera. Think of it as Elizabeth: The Genesis, …
March 5, 2008
Not Much Appetite
Full plate, half-heartedly picked at: Be Kind Rewind. Twisted, tangled, snarled zaniness around a behind-the-times video store, facing foreclosure, in Passaic, N.J. An habitué of the place (Jack Black, at his most demonically possessed) unwittingly …
February 27, 2008
The Way It Was
Scouring the upcoming schedule for Landmark Theatres, from now through May, I find no mention of the current reissue of Alain Resnais’s 1961 Last Year at Marienbad, one of the smallest handful of films that …
February 20, 2008
New Names
Thanks to an attractive cast, the creamy cinematography of John Bailey, and the light touch of writer and first-time director Jeff Lowell, Over Her Dead Body is an uncommonly pleasant romantic-comic fantasy, in the Blithe …
February 6, 2008
The Show May Go On
By practice and principle, the Oscar nominations are not an occasion for me, as they are for so many in my fraternity, to guess the winners, to lament the omitted, or to fill out an …
January 30, 2008
Party's Over
No matter how generally annoying a technical innovation or stylistic vogue might be (the telephoto lens, the zoom shot, rack focus, etc.), there will always come along a movie to show how it can be …
January 23, 2008
Plain and Simple
And now for something completely different. Persepolis, from France and in French, is a cartoon recap of the comic-strip memoir by Marjane Satrapi, covering her childhood in Iran under (and then out from under) the …
January 16, 2008
Reputations at Stake
Underfoot in the Christmas rush: Margot at the Wedding is Noah Baumbach's somewhat disappointing follow-up to The Squid and the Whale, though maybe not so disappointing if proper heed had been taken of his slovenly …
December 13, 2007
A Place in the Shade
If their powers are fully on display, it's only because, paradoxically, their powers are held partly in reserve.
December 6, 2007
The Lost Weekends
It was for just such situations that we have coined the expression "no-brainer."
November 29, 2007
Critical Time
A transparent phony playing a transparent phony is perhaps too much phoniness.
November 8, 2007
Let's Get Serious
There is no shadow of ambiguity in the characterization of the aghast suspect.
October 25, 2007
Thrillers Three
Clooney has firmly suppressed the head-waggling smugness that so often chills his charm.
October 18, 2007
The Unusual Suspects
This is not so much a film of the individual trees as of the overall forest.
September 13, 2007
Stop the World
To impose perspective is an important part of a critic's job, but it's a tricky part.
May 3, 2007
Paris in the Springtime
The level of culture in the film offers the American moviegoer a rare refuge and respite.
March 15, 2007
Killer on the Loose
The big question that hovers over Zodiac is not, Who's the Zodiac Killer? Nor is it, How did he elude capture? Nor, What ever became of him? None of the above. The big question is, …
March 8, 2007
Moonstruck
Jim Carrey's ability to "stretch" himself has proven to be strictly physical.
February 22, 2007
Spy in the Ointment
We can never really understand the man, but we can revel in him.
February 15, 2007
Thirteenth Month of the Year
The touches of animation are too few to have been worth the bother.
February 1, 2007
Movies reviewed this week: Venus, Le Petit Lieutenant, The Hitcher
It's a challenge to stay unspoiled after Children of Men and Letters from Iwo Jima on successive weeks. Many a week out of the year, Le Petit Lieutenant would doubtless be a sight for sore …
January 25, 2007
The Mexican Connection
Del Toro never lets his special effects take over to the same extent as in his Hollywood movies.
January 11, 2007
Good As It Got
The audience declared itself unwilling to follow this filmmaker down the path of anguish he has chosen to explore.
January 4, 2007
Snowed Under
Movies reviewed this week: Dreamgirls, The Good German, We Are Marshall, The Painted Vail, The History Books, The Pursuit of Happyness, Eragon
December 21, 2006
Maya Bad
Movies reviewed this week: Apocalypto, Blood Diamond, The Holiday, The Nativity Story
December 7, 2006
Few Thanks
This is a type of science fiction generally restricted to the printed page.
November 22, 2006