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(09/08/00 4:00am)
The Way of the Gun registers less as a film than as an exercise, a rehearsal of nigh-toothless neo-noir scenarios more notable now for their durability than for any recent infusion of vigor. This jarringly paced disappointment-the feature directorial debut of Oscar-winning Usual Suspects writer Christopher McQuarrie-is the latest in the increasingly ineffectual succession of Tarantino wanna-bes. It's overheated, undercooked and consistently inconsistent.
(09/01/00 4:00am)
Ripe with the same neo-Ealing spirit that suffused The Full Monty and Waking Ned Devine, the blithely picaresque Saving Grace considers a sleepy British town teeming with iconic locals, then subverts its twee gentility with Anglican coyness. Brenda Blethyn, she of Secrets & Lies fame and Little Voice shame, stars as the recently widowed Grace Trevethyn, whose late husband has checked his earthly debts at St. Peter's Gate. Stricken with deficit, Grace hits upon a beyond-unlikely scheme: with the assistance of her roguish gardener (co-writer Craig Ferguson), she'll cultivate a plot of hemp within her greenhouse and hock the herbal wares for much-needed quid.
(07/19/00 4:00am)
While The Perfect Storm is mostly sound and fury, it signifies a good deal more than should be reasonably expected from an effects-fueled summer thriller. Adapted from Sebastian Junger's 1997 novel, the film chronicles the high weather and higher tragedy encountered by the crew of the Andrea Gail, a swordfishing boat which, in the autumn of 1991, found itself at sea during the maritime convergence of three fearsome squalls.
(07/19/00 4:00am)
So far, this movie season has been depressingly respectable-there's only been one box-office bomb worthy of total scorn and derision. And fittingly, it's based on a book by a kooky Hollywood cultist-and it stars one, too. Battlefield Earth, John Travolta's galactic fiasco based on the novel by Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, clearly ranks as the year's most implosive critical and commercial bomb. We decided we'd pay tribute to B.E. by compiling our very own list of unforgettable hot-weather turkeys from summers past.
(07/19/00 4:00am)
Directed by, co-written by, and starring more Wayans brothers than can possibly be healthy, Scary Movie is only nominally a spoof of slasher films.
(03/24/00 5:00am)
So the Academy Awards are nigh upon us, and it's all American Beauty this and Cider House Rules that. I am sorry to report that, in a Pyrrhic victory for quality cinema, the most recent addition to the canon of American film has been obscured by the Oscar hype: I refer, of course, to New Line Cinema's latest pièce de résistance cinématique, the teen horror thriller Final Destination. Even though the tagline for this movie is "No Accidents... No Coincidences... No Escapes," I am proud to state that I whiled away last summer polishing this movie's script.
(05/03/99 4:00am)
From a dim corner of her hospital room I surveyed the patient, who appeared, tucked primly under the crisp sheets, not so much recouping from surgery as steeped in a late-evening reverie. Her blank face registered none of the pristine grimness which so often pervades medical environs; hopeful hints of rose could be discerned in her pale skin; and with each gentle inhalation, her chest lifted slowly but reassuringly heavenward. Mine, by contrast, palpitated so furiously that I braced myself for cardiac arrest.
(04/09/99 4:00am)
Precisely when did Drew Barrymore blossom into one of our most beguilingly self-deprecating actresses? Within the past 12 months, little Gertie has endured labor pains (Home Fries), a scheming stepmother (Ever After) and Adam Sandler (The Wedding Singer)-this must qualify as some sort of cinematic triathlon. And in her newest vehicle, Never Been Kissed, Barrymore braves-nay, revels in-the agonies of adolescent insecurity, to delightful results; not since Joan Cusack in In & Out has an attractive woman made herself so gleefully graceless.
(04/05/99 4:00am)
Regarding those students who lamented last Monday nightPis overthrow as the worst moment of their lives: Enough is enough. Sure, we are all disappointedait was a thrilling season, and without question, it ended less than satisfactorilyabut I feel like a part of me is gone?<= Apparently, the part that prioritizes.
(01/22/99 5:00am)
"I wish somebody else had found that money," a character laments near the end of A Simple Plan, as pistol shots reverberate through the winter woods and a pair of fresh corpses lay sprawled at his feet. It's a moment of beautiful understatement, one that perfectly encapsulates the spare, elegiac spirit of this mesmerizing morality parable.
(12/04/98 5:00am)
Tackling a black comedy, I suppose, is a filmmaker's way of declaring artistic fearlessness; on the evidence, it's also a convenient route to career suicide. Only a very few pictures ever achieve that necessary degree of edgy malevolence-far more often, genre efforts commit nihilistic overkill, sacrificing characterization to the wicked goings-on. So if nothing else-and, believe me, there ain't much else-the new Drew Barrymore vehicle Home Fries deserves credit for its conception as a (wannabe) dark comedy.
