Author Archive

Beijing Bicycle

Written by Matt Zoller Seitz on February 5, 2002. Posted in Miscellaneous, Posts

In the opening credits of Beijing Bicycle, a sprawling, intensely beautiful urban drama from Wang Xiaoshuai, the camera is close to the ground but still looking down at the harsh light bouncing off the pavement. Silhouettes of pedals and wheels gliding in front of the lens, the effect suggests elaborate paper cutouts gliding through a
[ read more... ]

Be the first to comment on this post

Anime Master Rintaro’s Metropolis Is Playful, Humane and Visually Stunning

Written by Matt Zoller Seitz on January 29, 2002. Posted in Miscellaneous, Posts

The Metropolis of Metropolis, the visually dazzling new sci-fi cartoon from Japan, is a city of iron, stone and circuitry–towers, towers and more towers, encircled by elevated rail lines and buzzed by choppers and hovercars and zeppelins. The architecture is 1920s Gothic and 1930s Teutonic, with touches of ancient Rome and Egypt and modern urban
[ read more... ]

Be the first to comment on this post

Brotherhood of the Wolf Tries Really, Really Hard, But It’s Pretty Depressing

Written by Matt Zoller Seitz on January 24, 2002. Posted in Miscellaneous, Posts

Right after leaving Brotherhood of the Wolf, the French chopsocky monster conspiracy epic, I called a friend and told him it was one of the worst movies I’d ever seen. In retrospect, that characterization wasn’t quite fair. Brotherhood of the Wolf is trash, but at least it doesn’t pretend to be urgent, relevant and emotionally
[ read more... ]

Be the first to comment on this post

Last Chance to See the Gorgeous New 2001, Maybe the Greatest Science Fiction Movie Ever

Written by Matt Zoller Seitz on January 15, 2002. Posted in Miscellaneous, Posts

A gorgeous new print of 2001: A Space Odyssey is playing in Manhattan right now, but unless you happen to walk past the Loews Astor Plaza and spy the title on the marquee, you’d never know. It was sneaked into that one theater for an abbreviated engagement that started December 14; as of the late
[ read more... ]

Be the first to comment on this post

Kate & Leopold’s Hugh Jackman Just Might Well Be the New Cary Grant

Written by Matt Zoller Seitz on January 9, 2002. Posted in Miscellaneous, Posts

Just when you’ve given up on the hope that movies will find another leading man as funny, classy and unmistakably masculine as Cary Grant, along comes a guy who just might fit the bill. Australian actor Hugh Jackman, costar of Kate & Leopold, appeared on moviegoers’ radar last summer as the adamantium-clawed Wolverine in X-Men–a
[ read more... ]

Be the first to comment on this post

2001: The Year of the Cinematographer; Ali Is an Evolutionary Leap in Biographical Cinema

Written by Matt Zoller Seitz on January 3, 2002. Posted in Miscellaneous, Posts

Was 2001 the Year of the Cinematographer? Perhaps so. In the past 12 months, we’ve seen a number of notable films shot in an array of diverse, arresting, personal, even innovative styles. The sheer variety of textures and moods suggests that we might be entering some kind of Golden Age of modern movie photography. What’s
[ read more... ]

Be the first to comment on this post

The Fellowship of the Ring Is So Impressive My Jaw Dropped

Written by Matt Zoller Seitz on December 27, 2001. Posted in Miscellaneous, Posts

The dirty little secret of reviewing is the dirty little secret of every profession: once you know how something is made, it becomes increasingly hard to sit back and experience that something the way everyone else experiences it. Over a period of years, you absorb a certain amount of knowledge about the process of filmmaking,
[ read more... ]

Be the first to comment on this post

The Peerless Judi Dench Stars in the Exceptional Iris

Written by Matt Zoller Seitz on December 20, 2001. Posted in Miscellaneous, Posts

The biographical movie Iris isn’t really a biographical movie in the typical sense of the term, and that’s bound to confuse some people. Its main characters are a couple of married, real-life English writers, novelist Iris Murdoch (Judi Dench) and author and academic John Bayley (Jim Broadbent). And on first glance, the film looks like
[ read more... ]

Be the first to comment on this post

The Impressive No Man’s Land Is Simple, Elegant, Blunt and Humane; Majid Majidi Is Iran’s Spielberg

Written by Matt Zoller Seitz on December 13, 2001. Posted in Miscellaneous, Posts

A scene early in No Man’s Land brilliantly sums up the agony and absurdity of war. In a godforsaken trench somewhere in Bosnia, two men–an armed Bosnian soldier, Ciki (Branko Djuric), and an unarmed Serb soldier, Nino (Rene Bitorajac)–hide on either side of a doorway, waiting for a distant Serbian armored division to cease shelling
[ read more... ]

Be the first to comment on this post

Spy Game Proves to Be Its Own Undoing; Jung (War) in the Land of the Mujaheddin Is an Honest Look at the Costs of War

Written by Matt Zoller Seitz on December 6, 2001. Posted in Miscellaneous, Posts

There seems to a limit on how smart blockbusters can be. For much of its running time, Spy Game, an epic espionage thriller with Robert Redford as a CIA caseworker and Brad Pitt as the field agent he mentors, is smart indeed. The filmmakers and the actors seem to understand the central moral puzzle of
[ read more... ]

Be the first to comment on this post

First «2 3 4 567 8 9 »Last