Reviews
Pages: [1] « 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 » [29]
B+ |
***½ |
+0|
Teens & Up
Based on the whimsical comic book series of the same name,
Men in Black looks superficially like another
Independence Day-style big-budget summer special-effects
extravaganza with a catchy three-letter acronym. Yet
MIB
is smarter, leaner, funnier, and more human than most entries in
the genre, relying less on spectacle than on the chemistry of the
two leads and the wit of the script for its appeal.
Read More >
A- |
***½ |
+2|
Teens & Up
From the very first sequence of Peter Jackson’s
The Two Towers — a bravura opening that stunningly recalls and continues a central sequence from
The Fellowship of the Ring — we feel that we’re in good hands. It’s a promise the subsequent three hours deliver on imperfectly.
Read More >
A+ |
**** |
+3|
Teens & Up
There can be no more fitting tribute to Peter Jackson’s
The Fellowship of the Ring than to apply to it the words with which C. S. Lewis acclaimed the original book when Tolkien first wrote it: “Here are beauties that pierce like swords or burn like cold iron; here is a [film] that will break your heart.”
Read More >
B- |
*** |
+0|
Teens & Up
Meg Ryan and Tim Robbins are cast somewhat against type: Ryan
often plays bubbleheaded and Robbins brainy, but here Ryan is a
science whiz, if a bubbly one, while Robbins is a grease monkey,
if a thoughtful one. The real twist, though, is that Catherine
(Ryan) happens to be the niece of Albert Einstein — and, while
she has a brainy fiancé, he’s a twit, and her uncle Albert
decides that she really needs someone like Ed.
Read More >
B |
*** |
-1|
Adults
Thanks to the skills of director Patrice
Leconte, L’Homme du train (Man on the Train) would
have made an excellent silent film, except that we would have
missed the enchanting tones of Jean Rochefort’s retired poetry
teacher, Monsieur Manesquier. Manesquier talks like a schoolboy
who has yet to leave behind his school days — his rich words and
phrases touch on his dreams and wishes, and are charmingly tinged
with sexual innuendo and self-deprecation. Rochefort’s
characterization is perfectly complemented by Johnny Hallyday’s
stoic career criminal, Milan, who responds to questions with
either silence or sapient, terse words.
Read More >
D |
** |
-2|
Teens & Up
Yes, the Cat now has mojo — yeah, baby, groovy!
Except he goes “OH yeah!” instead in this movie.
What’s next? Will the Sneetches get wild and crazy?
Will the Lorax get jiggy with Daisy-Head Mayzie?
Read More >
D |
*½ |
-2|
Teens & Up
By the time that you read this short essay of ours
The Grinch will have made ten squintillion more dollars!
The people have spoken!
The Grinch is a hit!
So who cares if some critic writes critical crit?
Read More >
D+ |
*½ |
-2|
Teens & Up
Scooby Dooby Doo
And Shaggy too
You both look and sound great.
But Daphne, you’re too Buff
Fred thinks he’s tough
And Velma — wow, you’ve lost weight!
Read More >
A- |
***½ |
+0|
Teens & Up
The most remarkable thing about
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is neither Johnny Depp’s mesmerizing performance, nor ILM’s literally eye-popping skeletal ghost-ship crew, but the sheer fact that the movie works at all.
Read More >
A |
**** |
+2|
Teens & Up*
Like a cannon blast across the bows, Peter
Weir’s
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is
a thunderous, almost defiant declaration heralding the arrival of
a force to be reckoned with.
Read More >
C- |
**½ |
-2|
Kids & Up*
No, no, not that true spirit of Christmas. This is a
Disney movie, after all. The most we can hope for is another
serving of Dickensian "Christmas Carol spirit" — brotherhood, family, generosity, that sort of thing.
Read More >
C+ |
**½ |
+0|
Kids & Up*
(Written by Jimmy Akin) The film is a mixed success. Fans of “The Wild Thornberrys“
will enjoy it, but it doesn’t have much ability to reach beyond
its core audience.
Read More >
C+ |
**½ |
+0|
Kids & Up
(Written by Jimmy Akin) Kids will definitely want to see it, as will die-hard adult fans of
the Looney Tunes characters. For their purposes, the movie is a
resounding success. It gives us a big screen adaptation of the Looney
Tunes characters which is faithful to the characters we grew up with.
Their comic sensibilities are the same, the timing is the same, even
many of the jokes are the same. And that’s part of the problem: There
is a little too much sameness about all this.
Read More >
C |
**½ |
-2|
Kids & Up*
(Co-written with Suzanne E. Greydanus) Based on a long-unfinished project dating to the New-Age /
ultra-PC heyday of Disney’s ’90s
renaissance, Brother Bear outdoes even
Pocahontas and
Atlantis: The Lost Empire
with its New-Age mysticism and eco-spirituality gospel
message.
Read More >
A- |
***½ |
+2|
Kids & Up*
If the toe-tapping gospel music of
The Fighting Temptations appeals to you but you were put off by that film’s negative Christian stereotypes and lack of even rote Hollywood spiritual uplift or pro-faith sentiment, treat yourself to this engaging,
gospel-infused documentary tribute to the African-American men and women who first began combining the heart and soul of Negro spirituals with the infectious rhythms of jazz and blues.
Read More >
A+ |
**** |
+0|
Kids & Up*
Probably the greatest and funniest film from
one of the cinema’s funniest acts,
Duck Soup is as
absurdly nonsensical as comedy can be and still be about
something.
Read More >
A+ |
**** |
+2|
Teens & Up
Like the Paramount logo mountain peak in the now-famous opening dissolve that started it all nearly three decades ago,
Raiders of the Lost Ark towers over the surrounding landscape. It is the apotheosis of its genre, the
Citizen Kane of pulp action–adventure, definitively summing up all that came before and setting the indelible standard for all that comes after.
Read More >
A- |
***½ |
+0|
Teens & Up
Though diminished by decades of pop-horror incarnations, the vampire remains uniquely evocative of both dread and fascination, horror and seductiveness. Monsters from werewolves to Freddy Krueger may frighten, but neither victims nor audience are drawn to them. By contrast, the vampire suggests the horror of evil working on our disordered passions.
Read More >
B |
*** |
+1|
Kids & Up
Oo-de-lally! As post-
Sleeping Beauty Disney animated features go,
Robin Hood is a fine entry, better than
The Sword in the Stone or
The Fox and the Hound but not as good as
The Jungle Book or
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.
Read More >
F |
***½ |
-4|
The Cell gives imaginative and
visual shape to as it were the very soul of misogynism,
perversion, depravity, sadism, and the supreme nihilism and
egotism of the damned. The film also has some images of beauty,
peace, and serenity; even some Christian symbolism — but all this
is quickly overwhelmed, even betrayed and subverted, so that the
dark themes dominate the film.
Read More >
D- |
** |
-3|
Adults*
As directed by Ridley Scott (Gladiator), Hannibal is
stylishly mounted and has its entertaining moments. Ultimately,
though, it’s like most horror movies: repellent where it should
have been frightening, and, in the end, uninvolving and hollow.
So many characters suffer such ghastly things, yet none of it
seems to matter much.
Read More >
A+ |
**** |
+4|
Kids & Up
The film is more than a dramatization, more than a biopic, more than a documentary: It is a spiritual portrait, almost a mystical portrait, of a Christ-like soul sharing in the sufferings of Christ.
Read More >
C+ |
*** |
-2|
Adults*
The making of Nosferatu — the first (if unauthorized)
film version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and one of the 45
films on the Vatican
film list — has passed into legend. Denied rights to
Dracula by Stoker’s widow, German director F. W. Murnau
simply had an adapted screenplay written with alternate character
names: Count Dracula became "Count Orlock," Jonathan Harker
became "Thomas Hutter," and so on. (Substantial changes were so
minimal that at least one English-language edition actually
restores Stoker’s original names in the title cards.)
Read More >
B+ |
*** |
+2|
Teens & Up
This line from Macbeth, quoted by
small-town librarian Charles Halloway (Jason Robards), perfectly
evokes the unsettling milieu of Ray Bradbury’s dreamlike thriller
about a creepy carnival coming to a small Illinois town.
Significantly, this line is immediately followed in the film by
the following verse from Longfellow, also quoted in the book:
Read More >
D+ |
** |
-2|
Adults
But when the plot then descends into a
Lethal Weapon-type action-chase scene, it’s clearly gone off the rails: a proper ghost story has an entirely different atmosphere from a
Lethal Weapon action flick.
Read More >
C+ |
*** |
+1-2|
Adults*
The original 1971 Willard, a nasty
B-grade horror flick about an oppressed misfit whose
only friends are an ever-growing army of rats, was not a movie
that cried out for a remake. Given the decision to make one,
though, it’s hard to imagine a more fitting casting choice than
Crispin Glover.
Read More >
A- |
*** |
++2-2|
Teens & Up
A native of Belgium, ordained in Honolulu, at the age of 33
Fr. Damien volunteered to become the first and only priest serving
the leper colony. There he spent himself attending as best he could to
the people’s needs, both spiritual and physical, offering the
sacraments but also dressing wounds, helping to shelter them from the
elements, even constructing coffins and digging graves.
Read More >
C |
** |
+1|
Kids & Up
But Radio isn’t really interested enough in its title
character as a person to show us much in the way of his
supposedly edifying behavior. Radio is less an active character
in his own film than a passive recipient of kindness or cruelty,
a subject of debate and controversy, a political football to be
kicked around. When high-school students between classes
cheerfully greet Radio as he cautions them not to run in the
hall, the point isn’t how much he cares about them, but how much
they care about him.
Read More >
A- |
***½ |
+3-2|
Teens & Up
God bless Sister Helen Travis, with her foul
mouth, black wimple, "I ♥ Jesus"
T-shirt, and
irascible, abrasive attitude. She might be a bit crazy, this
feisty, diminutive 69-year-old Benedictine nun living in a
rundown South Bronx building with as many as 20-plus male drug
addicts and alcoholics abiding by her strict regiment of curfews,
urine tests, community service, and biweekly house meetings. But
she’s also the best thing that’s happened to many of them in a
long time.
Read More >
A- |
***½ |
+1|
Kids & Up*
In retelling these tales, the Disney animation house
inevitably, yes, Disneyfied Milne’s creations, as it did
everything it touched, from the dwarfs in Snow White to
the satyr in Hercules.
Read More >
Pages: [1] « 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 » [29]