It seems fitting that a movie about debate competition should produce ambivalent feelings. As a master debater says early on in Jeffrey Blitz’s Rocket Science, a strong opinion is a luxury the great ones don’t allow themselves; it only gets in the way. What matters is being able to argue…
Back in 1995, Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise gave flesh to a Yank’s fantasy of worldly European womanhood: Julie Delpy’s Celine, a sprite who materialized on a passenger train for one sweet Viennese night of courtship and flirtation, as if willed from the fevered dreams above a thousand hostel beds. As…
Eight years ago, the philosophy professor-turned-cineast Bruno Dumont debuted his sophomore feature at the Cannes Film Festival. Set in a banal French village on the northeastern coast, the plot involved an investigation by police superintendent Pharaon, a repressed, mouth-breathing mama’s boy, into the rape and murder of an eleven-year-old girl…
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…
The Lives of Others (Sony) Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s film, easily the best of last year, exists on many levels: as tragedy, dark comedy, and love story — not between a man and a woman, but between two seemingly opposite men bound by the same damnation. On the one hand…
The latest comic meteorite to hurtle forth from the galaxy of producer Judd Apatow, Superbad is about a couple of chronically unpopular best friends who, after four years stuck on the lowest rung of the high-school social ladder, find themselves invited to a legitimately cool party. Goodbye, Friday nights chugging…
It’s impossible to write about David Wain’s The Ten without first making passing reference to Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Dekalog and Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. The former, originally made for Polish TV twenty years ago and first shown in the United States in 2000, offered a modern-day take on the…
No less than Spider-Man 3, Oren Rudavsky’s The Treatment is an urban fairy tale. It’s an Upper-West-Side story, adapted from publishing powerhouse Daniel Menaker’s well-reviewed 1998 novel, first published in the New Yorker, in which a smart-mouthed, if diffident, hero (Chris Eigeman) wins a wise, beautiful princess (the versatile, sometime…
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…
Taxi Driver: Collector’s Edition (Sony) “Listen, you fuckers, you screwheads: Here is a man who would not take it anymore.” Martin Scorsese’s 1976 vision of hell as city-of-night New York rips through the reverential treatment on this special edition like a hunter’s blade through deerskin. A second disc of eight…
Chris Tucker still believes in Michael Jackson. You can tell because in the very first scene of Rush Hour 3, the actor-comedian squeals melodically, grabs his crotch and throws his arms up to the heavens. All that’s missing is a giant off-stage fan to make Tucker’s shirt billow out behind…
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…
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…
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…
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 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…
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, 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…
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,…
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…
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 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.”…
