LADY VENGEANCE

Written by admin on October 23, 2008. Posted in Arts & Film, Film

Behold the powers of Spike Lee to get under people’s skin! By some unaccountable phenomena, Clint Eastwood’s Changeling resembles a Spike Lee movie. It starts with a simple premise: single mother Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) asks police to find her pre-teen son gone missing in 1928 Los Angeles. Then, like Lee, Eastwood piles on extraneous,
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ALTERED EGO

Written by admin on October 23, 2008. Posted in Arts & Film, Film

One has not truly suffered as a moviegoer until seeing Philip Seymour Hoffman perform a seizure in Synecdoche, New York. This freak-out has nothing to do with art and more to do with career promotion: Our cultural gatekeepers have rushed to crown ham-actor Hoffman King of the Ugly and Obvious Art Movie. And Charlie Kaufman’s
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MINIMUM GOODNESS

Written by admin on October 23, 2008. Posted in Arts & Film, Film

There’s something in the New York City air that Detective Max Payne (Mark Wahlberg) doesn’t care for. Oddly, it’s not the perpetual shower of snowflakes (or rain or sparks) that surround him, turning Manhattan into a gritty fairyland. Inclement weather isn’t what’s bothering Payne; those winged creatures killing junkies are. And no, the movie doesn’t
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TEEN SMART

Written by admin on October 16, 2008. Posted in Arts & Film, Film

Four teams vie for Student Union president in Frontrunners, a documentary about the competitive nature of Stuyvesant High, New York’s top-ranked public school. (Only 3 percent of 25,000 yearly applicants gain admission.) Director Caroline Suh looks at each ticket (headed by drama student Hannah Freiman, jock Alex Leonard, debonair Mike Zaytsev and cagey George Zisiadis)
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THE BEE WORD

Written by admin on October 16, 2008. Posted in Arts & Film, Film

That’s the question director Gina Prince-Bythewood poses in her adaptation of The Secret Life of Bees, which is based on a novel that rips off the female-empowerment angle of The Color Purple. Prince-Bythewood, who directed the 1999 romance Love and Basketball, may have intended a showcase for strong black screen actresses, but she neglected to
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CYNICAL SELL-OUTS

Written by admin on October 16, 2008. Posted in Arts & Film, Film

Bad movies beget worse ones. That’s the lesson of What Just Happened, a behind-the-scenes Hollywood spoof from Barry Levinson, director of the unbelievably overrated Wag the Dog. At least back in 1992, Levinson’s script was by David Mamet, someone with few ideas about film industry venality and how to construct political satire. Now Levinson’s way
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HOW TO ALIENATE NO ONE BUT THE SOURCE MATERIAL'S FANS

Written by admin on October 9, 2008. Posted in Arts & Film, Film

By some bizarre alchemy, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, Toby Young’s 2001 acid-penned letter to New York media based on his experiences at Vanity Fair, has been translated to the screen as a Judd Apatow romantic comedy crossed with The Devil Wears Prada. Completely fictionalizing Young’s memoir, How to Lose Friends now presents
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READY TO ROLL

Written by admin on October 9, 2008. Posted in Arts & Film, Film

Guy Ritchie didn’t make the mistake of putting his wife Madonna in RocknRolla; but his latest gangster film queers a sense of Macho to match Madonna’s sense of Slut. Hopefully, Ritchie’s fantasy won’t roll back human progress; but this time it’s shaped an unexpectedly enjoyable movie. RocknRolla joins badass folderol to bad-boy (adolescent) distress. Ritchie’s
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HEARTLESS DARKNESS

Written by admin on October 9, 2008. Posted in Arts & Film, Film

Paul Newman’s passing casts a shadow over Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe’s performances in Body of Lies. This spy/mercenary flick feels like a eulogy-a slick, cynical death knell-for Newman’s ideal: the morally charismatic movie star. As CIA field agent Roger Ferris and his Langley, Va., boss Ed Hoffman, DiCaprio and Crowe shed the recognizable moral
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ASHES TO ASHES

Written by admin on October 9, 2008. Posted in Arts & Film, Film

When I interviewed director Wong Kar Wai and cinematographer Christopher Doyle at the Apple Store’s event, “Music in the Films of Wong Kar Wai,” in Soho, it was Doyle who gave the best justification for this week’s release of re-mastered and re-scored Ashes of Time Redux. “I don’t think of it as a remaster,” Doyle
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