Does every generation get the Charlie's Angels it deserves?
The overhaul of the late-Seventies TV series is, in essence, M:I-2 plus T&A.; The Mission: Impossible element comes clear in the opening sequence when, by and by, the Steadicam gives up roving the aisles of an airborne jetliner and settles down in front of an African-garbed LL Cool J, who, …
What would probably like to be thought of as a big goof, or alternatively a big boner, must instead be regarded as a big botch. The bigger-headedness that results from the big hit of 2000 is not an attractive feature, and in truth none of the three Angels -- Drew …
Yesterday's "jiggle TV" is today's feminist satire.
Sentimental, even goopy, ghost story about a promising young yachtsman whose near-death car wreck leaves him with the ability to See Dead People, most particularly and regularly, every day at sunset for a game of catch, the adoring younger brother who perished in the passenger seat. (The first time he’s …
Didactic poli-sci lesson on How the System Works, entertainingly illustrated by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director Mike Nichols. The titular war is the one between the Soviets and the Afghans in the Reagan era, and Charlie Wilson is a nonfictional Texas congressman (played with supreme complacency by Tom Hanks) who, …
The title is colorless on purpose. But by the end -- and quite precisely in the meaningful curtain line -- it acquires a richness of shade and tint. The heroine will by then, in the common phrase, have shown her true colors. An old-fashioned, grandly romantic WWII espionage thriller (vaguely …
Shot-on-video indie, written and directed by Eric Byler, takes an interest in the unstereotyped private life of a taciturn Asian-American auto mechanic ("Specializing in German cars"), an area of existence into which Hollywood hasn't much inclination to shine a klieg light. It uncovers mystery and intrigue within its mundanity. Jacqueline …
E.B. White's barnyard children's story, a friendship fable about the promise of a spider to save a spring pig from the smokehouse. Sweet sentiment soured by the cacophonous Cultural Diversity of the animal voices (British sheep, Southern cows, African-American geese, New York City rat, Julia Roberts spider, and so on) …
Satyajit Ray pursues his interest in Women's Issues into the past century, with an autobiographical Tagore story about a neglected wife's gradual attachment to a scholarly cousin (the Tagore figure). The pursuit, as usual, is a cautious and circumspect one, maybe a little too much so, and the wife as …
A distinguished name in movies: Arthur Ripley's The Chase, 1946; Arthur Penn's The Chase, 1966. Until now. The chase itself — cop cars after a hijacked BMW — wastes no time getting started; and the quick zooming, panning, cutting visual style is designed to encourage the viewer to follow the …
Conventional service comedy about two Navy Shore Patrolmen, a gravel-voiced veteran named Rock (Tom Berenger) and a swaggering young scammer on his final day before discharge (William McNamara, a ringer for Ricky Nelson), who are assigned to transport a double-D-cup prisoner (Erika Eleniak) bent on escape. The biggest joke of …
The third installment, after Clerks and Mallrats, in the "New Jersey Trilogy" of Kevin Smith, and easily the most ambitious and daring of the three. This is especially measurable in Smith's efforts to broaden his range into areas of the sincere, the sentimental, the downright sappy -- suspiciously similar to …
When a young filmmaker sets out to understand the ’90s LGBTQ+ rom-com that saved his life, he is forced to confront complicated truths of his own, that will change who he is forever.
Scientists and filmmakers fight to save dying coral reefs. Jeff Orlowski directs.