Family Rated PG
“…lessons are learned, love is spoken and nobody needs to be put down (including country-music star Tim McGraw).
Drama Rated R
Most movies, especially war movies, mythologize their subjects. Flags of Our Fathers does the opposite. In telling the story behind the famous World War II photo of Americans planting a flag on the island of Iwo Jima, director Clint Eastwood means to deconstruct the symbolic power of the image itself. At times, it’s a challenge
Drama Rated PG-13
I wouldn’t say all the fuss over Sofia Coppola’s anachronistic history project was much ado about nothing, but it was certainly much ado about nothingness. Coppola depicts Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst) as less monarch than entitled celebrity, reveling in a life of endless shoes, luscious desserts and blasts of 1980s modern rock. Beyond this, Marie doesn’t
Awful, yet awfully fascinating. Writer-director Guy Ritchie (Snatch) leads his wife Madonna through a remake of the 1975 Italian comedy, which followed a society woman stranded on an island with a working-class sailor who slaps her into submission. In place of the original’s cruelty, Ritchie adds a sweeping sense of romanticism and bizarre moments in
An Officer and a Gentleman didn’t invent the military-romance cliches that have haunted us ever since 1982 – 2006 alone gave us doppelgangers such as Annapolis and The Guardian, and of course there was Top Gun – but the movie was such an overwhelming, popular favorite that it essentially carved the cliches into stone. Richard
Comedy Rated PG-13
What looks to be a farce about a Jon Stewart-type comedian who runs for President is mostly a political thriller about an election conspiracy. The entire project is at odds with itself, and the producers know it. They don’t, however, know what to do with it, which is why the commercials focused on Robin Williams’
“…a cast composed of actors who are bad enough on their own, and who together amount to something unholy.
Action/Adventure Rated R
If you thought Mel Gibson had a screw loose after his DUI arrest, wait until you see Apocalypto. This bizarre action epic set amidst the last throes of the Mayan civilization reveals a mind obsessed with the ways human flesh can be eviscerated. Yet it also reveals a filmmaker curious about other things – history,
A carefully constructed consideration of the themes at play in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, The Hours features three great actresses doing great work: Oscar-winner Nicole Kidman, portraying Woolf as she battles mental illness while writing Dalloway; Julianne Moore, as a brittle mother suffocating beneath the domestic responsibilities of the 1950s; and Meryl Streep, playing a
Action/Adventure Rated PG-13
Director Zhang Yimou follows up Hero with another martial arts extravaganza set in ancient China. If Hero was an exercise in opulent color, this is a celebration of sound, from the delicate rustle of falling leaves to the reverberating ping of crossed swords. The focus on sound makes sense, considering the main character (Ziyi Zhang
