The resurrection of the pratfall-prone Inspector Clouseau can hardly be judged a degradation of the original Blake Edwards film of the same name, seeing as how Edwards himself degraded it in the process of doing seven sequels, including a posthumous patchwork with the peerless Peter Sellers, a substitution of the …
Sequel to PC: The Curse of the Black Pearl. And more than just a sequel: Part II of an afterthought trilogy. (It was not a matter of thought, exactly, as much as a matter of calculation.) Johnny Depp's heavily eyeshadowed, thick-tongued pirate got to be something of a tired act …
Its title and its emcee have been taken from Garrison (a/k/a Garrulous) Keillor's weekly public-radio show. But there is no mention of the imaginary world of Lake Woebegone, MN. The sole setting is the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, named after native son F. Scott, and ticketed for the wrecking …
Not the best film of its year to deal with the subject of magic and to feature both Scarlett Johansson and Hugh Jackman. That distinction would belong to Woody Allen's Scoop, which was unchallenged as well (except insofar as the air pressure in Jessica Biel's lips may have challenged Scarlett …
Chen Kaige's colorful, splashy, tall-corn fairy tale, set in China's mythological past, possesses a sloppy technique, tacky special effects, and in consequence a modicum of charm. With Dong-Kun Jang, Hiroyuki Sanada, Cecilia Cheung, Nicholas Tse.
An Australian Western, or in other words not truly a Western, notwithstanding the Western iconography of six-shooters, horses, spear-chucking "savages," a fraternal gang of outlaws (Guy Pearce, Danny Huston), a bounty hunter (John Hurt out-hamming John Carradine), a ruthless land-taming lawman and his genteel wife (Ray Winstone, Emily Watson). Even …
Equal-opportunity romantic triangle in which a love-'em-and-lose-'em lesbian (slash opera buff slash one-time novelist), on the rebound from her latest desertion, hooks up with a heterosexual male philosophy professor from Columbia University and simultaneously (out of all the people in New York City!) with his on-and-off girlfriend, all three of …
The attainment of sappyness. A hand-to-mouth San Francisco salesman -- of portable bone-density scanners, an unnecessary luxury item -- lands an unsalaried competitive internship at Dean Witter, but not before his wife walks out on him and their five-year-old son ("Did Mom leave because of me?"). The star is the …
A spot of simulated Royals-watching, ably guided by the seasoned Stephen Frears: a satisfying, if unsurprising and unrevealing and unimaginative re-enactment of what must have gone on behind closed doors in the week after the death of Princess Di, in specific the diplomatic efforts of the newly elected Tony Blair …
A sleazy, unsavory, but indeed quiet domestic melodrama, tracing the female-bonding experience of an In Crowd high-school "virgin" (Elisha Cuthbert) and the deaf-mute orphaned outcast (Camilla Belle) who comes to live under the same roof, and who, on the sly, performs concert-caliber Beethoven on the piano and turns out unsurprisingly …
Slice of Latino life in Echo Park, centered around a pregnant virgin (Emily Rios) a few months shy of her fifteenth birthday, "the day she becomes a woman." (Her boyfriend's suggested name for the baby: "If he's a boy, we can call him Jesús.") The filmmakers, Richard Glatzer and Wash …
Green-around-the-gills chiller (literally greenish photography) about a spunky St. Louis career girl searching in a Texas small town for the source of her mystifying self-mutilation. Strictly going through the motions, and lumberingly. With Sarah Michelle Gellar, Sam Shepard, Peter O'Brien, Adam Scott, and Kate Beahan; directed by Asif Kapadia.
Jumbled, hurried docudrama heavily accentuates the "docu" over the "drama." Co-directors Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross re-enact the case of three British Pakis arrested in Afghanistan in late 2001 (post-youknowwhat) and detained without charge in Cuba for the better part of three years. They dig into the case as deep …
The San Diego here isn't a where, but a who: Diego Maradona, patron saint of Argentinean futbol. The film tells the story of Tati, an unemployed lumberjack who hears that his hero is recuperating in a Beunos Aires hospital after suffering heart trouble, and decides to bring Maradona a piece …