Dangerous Liaisons retailored to the bodies and needs of modern American teens: it's still weighted with quaint notions of purity and reputation, but played mainly for catty laughs. (Don't misunderstand. It's not about teenagers who consciously act out a video they've seen, much less an 18th-century novel they've read. They …
Dark Horse is Todd Solondz’s most watchable film since Welcome to the Dollhouse. Come to think of it, it’s his only watchable film since Welcome to the Dollhouse. Solondz has long positioned himself as the heir to the Woody Allen throne. One look at his first feature, Fear, Anxiety, and …
John Waters at low ebb. Spring is sprung, the sap is flowing, the birds twitter and the bees buzz, and the battle lines are drawn, straight through Middle America, between the sex maniacs and the neuters. ("Let's go sexin'!" vs. "I'm Viagra-vated and I'm not going to take it anymore!") …
Multi-player mating game on the playing field of Portland, Ore. Essentially soap opera with philosophical aspirations and a tendency to talk them at us. Most of it is mildly interesting, in a low-suds sort of way, but the relentless effort to transform it into a Big Statement ("God is either …
A nothing, or close enough to make no difference, about a groom-to-be who wakes up after his bachelor party with a Tiki Girl in his bed. The Tiki Girl turns out to be the bride-to-be's cousin. An attack of the crabs, a simulated bout of diarrhea, a pair of "dirty" …
Alias H.B., alias Red, alias Big Monkey -- a horned demon unleashed by the Nazis and harnessed by the forces of good (namely the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense), his horns filed down to unmenacing stumps. A jokey comic-book adaptation (Dark Horse Comics) with delusions of grandeur. Guillermo Del …
A black mark on the record of director Guillermo del Toro, whose record, which started out so clean with Cronos in his native Mexico and Mimic in the Hollywood system, looks now a bit ink-stained: Blade II, the first and second Hellboy, and nothing else that comes close to those …
A wish-fulfillment fairy tale, more voguishly known as an empowerment myth, concerning a So-Cal sorority sister, Fashion Merchandising major, and Miss Hawaiian Tropic runner-up (Reese Witherspoon, in her mile-wide vein of mockery) who gets herself admitted into Harvard Law School to chase after her ex-boyfriend -- and oh by the …
Dangerous Liaisons retailored to the bodies and needs of modern American teens: it's still weighted with quaint notions of purity and reputation, but played mainly for catty laughs. (Don't misunderstand. It's not about teenagers who consciously act out a video they've seen, much less an 18th-century novel they've read. They …
Mauling satire of a high-school vixen (a ready and willing Evan Rachel Wood) and her victims, as she finagles her way from the lead role in the Drama Club Diary of Anne Frank to a featured part in the network sitcom, Dysfunction. It shoots for the vein of Heathers, Election, …
Dad’s losing his battle with cancer, mom can’t pull herself to pieces, the school bully demands this week’s homework assignment, and gay uncle’s return home after a 6 year absence is wreaking havoc on homophobic gramps. Is it any wonder 11-year-old Eli McAllister’s (Parental Guidance's Joshua Rush) last hope for …
A diptych by Todd Solondz, composed of one part called "Fiction" and another part called "Nonfiction." (The first revolves around a Creative Writing class, the second around a documentary film: equally fictitious.) Both parts permit Solondz to re-echo some of the accusations -- an "ugly" comment in part one, a …