Stardust

Stardust is less an adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s 1999 novel than of its dust-jacket synopsis. That will come as disconcerting news to fans of the author, who thus far has avoided the fate of fellow fantasy writers and comics creators who’ve had their works mangled by the studios’ clumsy assembly…

10 MPH

Right before Segway scooters were unleashed onto the world, there was talk of this new machine that was going to change the way America travels. A social revolution, the press releases promised. Then they hit the streets and people asked, “Why would I pay $4,000 for a machine that walks…

Sketches

The American Landscape and Carny. Rule Gallery has typically presented single solos since landing in its new space several months ago, but this time, there are two different shows in that long and narrow sales room. The two work well together, though, as both are made up of photographs about…

Elvis Is Everywhere

Bubba Ho-tep Limited Edition (MGM) Intentional camp is difficult to do well. It’s a contradiction that usually comes off cutesy and forced. The old Batman series pulled it off, and it’s been B-movie god Bruce Campbell’s livelihood. But in a long career of overacting and mugging, Campbell’s peak may be…

The Bourne Ultimatum

The Bourne Ultimatum opens in Russia as the amnesiac super-spy Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) does what he does best: elude capture, crack skulls, brood. Lickety-split, he’s en route to Paris, nursing his wounds and breaking out with a bad case of those itchy-scratchy hallucinations known as Hollywood Flashback Syndrome. Choice…

Becoming Jane

Oh, wipe that starchy Masterpiece Theatre moue off your face. Pop Jane Austen is fun, especially when it’s almost completely made up. According to Becoming Jane, a new addition to the plentiful Austen spinoff canon, our lady of graceful letters was hot stuff at cricket and kissing and had a…

Interview

Interview, Steve Buscemi’s second feature as both director and star, takes about twenty minutes to restrict the world to a single room, but once it arrives, the action seems to be held there by the pull of a cold sun. Buscemi plays a shabby ex-war correspondent with the fromage-scented name…

Cecil B. Demented

John Waters’s movies are best viewed through the eyes of an autistic child. Please, hear me out before you label this statement as a cruel slur. I was introduced to the world of John Waters by my autistic sister. After suffering though her mechanical spouting of monologues from Uncle Buck,…

Sketches

The American Landscape and Carny. Rule Gallery has typically presented single solos since landing in its new space several months ago, but this time, there are two different shows in that long and narrow sales room. The two work well together, though, as both are made up of photographs about…

Fuzz Busters

Hot Fuzz (Universal) The second feature from writer-director Edgar Wright and writer-star Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead) has been available on home video for decades: Hot Fuzz is, after all, a witty and wisecracking montage of clips from some hundred-plus A-list and bargain-bin action films, chief among them Lethal…

The Simpsons Movie

The less said about the plot of the long-fabled, finally-arrived Simpsons Movie, the better; I know this instinctively, as a member of that particular segment of geekdom most psyched and apprehensive about its unveiling. I’m talking about the people who ask, “Does it suck?,” then prayerfully add, “Please don’t suck.”…

No Reservations

Sadly, No Reservations is not the big-screen adaptation of Anthony Bourdain’s snack-gulping, risk-taking Travel Channel show; you’ll find no monkey brains here, nor any attempts to party down in Beirut while Hezbollah and Israel blow each other to smithereens. This is just more of the same from the franchise factory…

Lady Chatterley

The raciest thing I ever saw my mother do was read a brown-paper-covered Penguin edition of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover on the London Underground. She didn’t fool all the other passengers carrying similarly disguised copies, and though I was only twelve years old in that fall of 1960…

Sunshine

In the observation room of the spacecraft Icarus II, passengers sit on a bench in front of a large, rectangular screen displaying a view of what lies ahead. They gaze at the spectacle as you might marvel at special effects on some ostentatious plasma monitor. A seething orb of gas…

Triad Election

When a Hong Kong action flick comes into your grasp, what else can you expect but fast, awesome martial arts? Triad Election shattered that stereotype, making me feel like the asshole who speaks slowly and loudly to anyone who looks foreign, only to be answered with “I speak English, dumbass.”…

Sketches

The American Landscape and Carny. Rule Gallery has typically presented single solos since landing in its new space several months ago, but this time, there are two different shows in that long and narrow sales room. The two work well together, though, as both are made up of photographs about…

Rescue Dawn

Nothing if not appropriate for summer blockbuster season, Werner Herzog’s latest feature, based on his 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly, offers a suitably fantastic tale of war, freedom and fortitude, set in the jungles of Indochina and featuring an immigrant lad who turns out to be just as…

I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry

I wanted to hate I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, truly I did. Two straight guys pretending to be gay (insert fiscal excuse here); been there, done that (insert all known variants on The Odd Couple here). Rampant homophobia hiding behind liberal pleas for tolerance — blech. And it’s…

Hairspray

Did John Waters sell out? Or did our ever-more-metrosexual age merely render him irrelevant? Certainly long before Hairspray took up residence on the Great White Way in 2002, Waters had abdicated his throne as America’s elder statesman of underground smut in favor of a more lucrative career as a neutered…

The Shining

I sometimes wonder how frightening The Shining would be if the soundtrack were muted. How scary would Jack Nicholson be if he were lugging an ax around without the creepy screech of violins and cellos like constant nails on a chalkboard? How troubling would a little kid be if his…

Sketches

Fang Lijun: Heads. China is definitely on the ascendancy internationally. Not only does the teeming economic powerhouse produce all the junk that can be found in a suburban Wal-Mart, but it’s also turning out important artists who have taken the contemporary scene in the U.S. and Europe by storm. Adam…

Cold War Reheated

Red Dawn: Collector’s Edition (MGM) John Milius’s 1984 war pic was a mighty bonkers release even back then; not since the 1950s had something come down the pike so rife with Commie paranoia. Russian and Cuban forces invade the U.S. with tanks and choppers and the whole shebang, only to…