[8] This is an underrated comic book adaptation with slick, period production design and top-notch action choreography from director Joe Johnston (Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, October Sky). There’s a gee-whiz ebullience about The Rocketeer that I find utterly charming. Bill Campbell and Jennifer Connelly (future Oscar-winner for A Beautiful Mind) are attractive leads, even if their archetypal characters are somewhat shallow. Timothy Dalton’s villainous …
[8] Tim Robbins (The Shawshank Redemption) stars as an unwitting mail room clerk thrust into the office of CEO at a mythical uber-corporation when the board members decide to send the company’s stocks into a nose dive. But the board, headed by a coolly evil Paul Newman, doesn’t count on their newly anointed dim-wit to invent the next materialistic rage — the hula hoop. Under …
[8] Director Paul Verhoeven (RoboCop, Basic Instinct) continues his knack for combining violence, gore, dark humor and social commentary in this loose adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein’s serialized novel about humankind’s future war against a race of insect-like aliens. I can almost enjoy the movie for the action alone. It escalates beautifully, with plenty of exciting sequences and spectacular visual effects. But it’s the satirical …
[6] Ben Stiller gives a career-best performance in Permanent Midnight, based on Jerry Stahl’s autobiographical book of the same name. As Jerry, Stiller plays a Hollywood writer whose heroin habit almost destroys him. Elizabeth Hurley and Maria Bello play romantic interests, while Owen Wilson, Janeane Garofalo, and Fred Willard pop up in supporting roles. While Stahl’s downward spiral is certainly harrowing, complete with endangering the …
[8] In pre-World War II Florence, a group of elitist British dames and a garish American art collector take in a small boy and raise him. When Britain and America enter the war several years later, the young man returns the favor by looking after the women when they’re interned by the Italian police — and helping to smuggle one of them out of the …
[4] Julian Sands and Sherilyn Fenn star in this odd-ball drama about a surgeon who chops off the limbs of his feisty lady love so he can have her all to himself. I appreciate a lot of what writer/director Jennifer Lynch (daughter of David Lynch) is trying to say in her script, especially with Sands’s character, a Freudian mess of a man who is trying …
[5] SPOILER REVIEW I really liked American Beauty when it was first released. Maybe I was wooed by its quirky introspection and aesthetic achievments. Or maybe it was screenwriter Alan Ball’s fresh new way of blending the real with the surreal. Or even the meditative lilt of Thomas Newman’s trend-setting score. But whatever the reason(s), watching the film ten years later, I realize — American …
[6] In this horror comedy from director Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings), Michael J. Fox stars as a charlatan ghostbuster who can communicate with the undead. After many of the local ghost community start disappearing, Fox gets roped into solving the mystery, which involves a 20-year old mass-murder at a nearby mental institution. If it sounds convoluted, it is. The narrative is over-complicated, involving …
[9] Who said period pieces have to be stuffy? Director Oliver Parker equips a talented and charming ensemble cast with the eviscerating words of Oscar Wilde. Rupert Everett owns the role Arthur Goring, a self-centered playboy who runs from responsibility and commitment, but who still manages to be a loyal friend. Julianne Moore is delightful as the nefarious Mrs. Cheveley, whose blackmailing threatens to upset …
[10] A profound, yes profound, pitch black satire that has become an anthem for a “generation of men raised by women”. From a gender studies perspective, Fight Club speaks to the fragility of masculine identity and the disturbing lengths to which misguided youth will go to feel like they belong, to have identity, to be men. Fight Club is famously reviled for its graphic depiction …
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