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The Signal: Blood! Give Us More Blood!
Among the most graphically violent works of art ever committed to celluloid, this mindblower of a film…
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Note by Note: Worlds Best Steinway Infomercial
Note by Note Given rapt attention and care in the framing, there is no more engrossing subject than…
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Charlie Bartlett: Not Enough Teen Angst
Like most wanna-be heroes of the eager-to-please teen comedy, poor little rich boy Charlie Bartlett (Anton Yelchin)…
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The Great Communist Bank Robbery: Doomed Felons Re-enact Own Crime
Acclaimed new Romanian movies like 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and The Death of…
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Diary of the Dead: Zombies Enter the YouTube Era
Fleet-footed corpses are, from a physiological point of view, complete bullshit. “If you run that fast, your…
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Definitely, Maybe: Ryan Reynolds Not So Awful After All
Sandwiched somewhere between the American Spirit commercials and the Clinton campaigning that make up Definitely, Maybe is a…
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The Spiderwick Chronicles: Nick Nolte Will Terrify Your Kids
Freud lives and prospers in The Spiderwick Chronicles, an exceptionally oedipal fantasy adventure based on the popular…
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Academy Award Nominated Shorts: As Usual, the Cartoons Are Better
Among the five live-action shorts in this 137-minute compendium, Hollywood will find two films that hew perfectly…
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The Witnesses: The Bad Old Days of AIDS in 80s France
From André Téchiné (Wild Reeds), The Witnesses dramatizes the early AIDS crisis in France. Being set in…
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Rambo: Sly Stallone as National Icon
He’s back–unflagging, indestructible, super-colossal. Through this epoch-defining figure one may refract American history. John Updike has his Rabbit…
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Summer Love: Polish Cowboys Kill Val Kilmer!
The first feature by the conceptual Polish artist Piotr Uklanski, Summer Love is a mock spaghetti Western that…
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The Violin: Mexican Peasants Revolt, but Artfully
Writer-director Francisco Vargas’ first feature, an evocation of the 1970s Guerrero peasant revolt, is a solemn, suspenseful,…
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4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days: The Horror of Birth Control in Ceausescus Romania
The extraordinary Romanian film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, more comfortably known as “that abortion movie…
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Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins: Martin Lawrence Dials It Down, Barely
In this overlong but exuberantly performed comedy from writer-director Malcolm D. Lee (Undercover Brother), Martin Lawrence is…
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Vince Vaughns Wild West Comedy Show: Backstage Bits Outshine Those in the Spotlight
Even at 100 minutes, this documentary about Vaughn and pals’ 2005 bus tour from L.A. to Chicago…
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In Bruges: Colin Farrell Has Adorable Eyebrows, Shoots People
Black, fluffy, and gloriously conjoined, Colin Farrell’s eyebrows aren’t the prettiest things about In Bruges—that honor falls…
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The Rape of Europa: Those Darn Nazis!
Impressive in scope if unremarkable in style, The Rape of Europa provides a chronology of World War…
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Fools Gold: Again, Matthew McConaughey Takes Off His Shirt
Is Fool’s Gold really a new movie, or just some infernal clip reel cut together from that…
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Shrooms: Stoners Take a Very Bad Trip
In Hollywood marketing parlance, this low-budget Irish horror flick should appeal to the sacred “four quadrants” of…
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Nanking: Ever Wonder Why China Hates Japan?
In The Rape of Nanking, journalist Iris Chang chronicled the 1937 Japanese invasion of Nanking and the…