THE MOVIE:

The case of Roman Polanski has been one of the most notorious and hotly debated scandals since 1977, when the immigrant director was charged with various crimes surrounding his sexual relations with a thirteen-year-old girl. The resulting trial, the media frenzy around it, and Polanski's eventual flight from the U.S. have been the subject of much scrutiny and speculation, but never with such incisive and revealing detail as director Marina Zenovich's recent documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.

The title of the film comes from a summation of Polanski's double-sided life. On one side, he is a fugitive from justice wanted for a crime that is now more than three decades old; on the other side, he is a desired filmmaker and even a vener...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Careless is an airheaded romantic comedy with a largely unmet yen to be edgy, and yet it manages to coast along on a somewhat inexplicable laidback charm. Most of that appeal undoubtedly can be attributed to its lead, Colin Hanks, who sports glasses, a stubbly beard and the exasperated comic persona of his famous father, Tom Hanks.

Hanks plays Wiley Roth, a slacker bookworm who works at Book'em, a bookstore specializing in mysteries. Then Wiley, who is forced to wear a Sherlock Holmes deerstalker cap when on the job, stumbles into a mystery of his own. One evening, he discovers a severed finger on the floor of his kitchen. In one of many credibility-strained plot turns, Wiley does not immediately call the police. Instead, he places the solitary digit in a Ziploc bag and resolves to track down its rightful owner.

As happenstance (and I do mean happenstance) ...Read the entire review

The Film:
For the record, and just so there is no confusion, I get what it was that sibling filmmakers Jeff and Matthew Campagna were trying to pull off in Six Reasons Why, their loving homage to spaghetti westerns. But just because I understand, and to a certain extent respect and appreciate all they attempt as multi-tasking filmmakers, it does not mean that I enjoyed the film any more. The fact of the matter is that while Six Reasons Why is an ambitious film, with a very clear sense of artistic vision that I really wanted to enjoy, it wasn't all that fun to sit through. And when push comes to shove, if a movie isn't that fun to watch...well...then nothing else matters.

Set in a barren desert region known as the Badlands, Six Reasons Why starts out looking as if it is a traditional western. But as a few anachronisms pop up, it soon becomes apparent that this is actual...Read the entire review

Background: Each culture has a generally defined norm for what constitutes a family, my own being old enough that the term "nuclear family" applied. That meant a father at the head of the table (the breadwinner), a caring mother, and my siblings (with a dog, a single family house in the suburbs and all the trimmings, all that was missing was the white picket fence). This was how things were supposed to be, right up until my parents divorced, something decidedly abnormal though the practice became increasingly popular since then. There are benefits to such a family structure and the patriarchal model is one of the most common throughout the ages for a number of reasons, popular entertainment embracing this standard for a long time as well. But what happens when the structure breaks down and the family isn't prepared to deal with it? That's one of the driving forces behind a small movie I pick...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Ellen Page (of Juno and Hard Candy fame) plays a fifteen year old girl named Tracey Berkowitz. When we meet her, she's sitting on the back of a bus explaining to us that she's looking for her little brother, Sonny (Zie Souwand) who went missing shortly after she hypnotized him into believing that he was a dog.

As Tracey wanders around the city trying to figure out what exactly happened to Sonny, she talks to us about her school life, her lackluster love life and whirlwind romance with Billy Zero (Slim Twig), her strange experiences with an unusual psychologist, and of course her completely dysfunctional relationship with her mother and father (Ari Cohen). The real meat of the mystery lies not in deciphering what happens to Tracey, but in figuring how much of it occurs in the literal world in contrast to the large portions which are obviously playing out only...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Am ancient Chinese proverb contends that all human experience is linked by four emotions: Happiness, pleasure, sorrow and love. In The Air I Breathe, novice director/co-writer Jieho Lee uses that aphorism as a springboard to explore the connectedness of several noir archetypes mired in crisis. It's an ambitious movie, and occasionally an ingenious one, but such attributes don't entirely redeem this exercise in pomposity.

The flick is divided into four vignettes, with each illustrating one of the four core emotions. In "Happiness," a mousy stockbroker played by Forest Whitaker makes a play for big money when he overhears some colleagues talking about a rigged horse race. Instead, the sure thing loses and leaves the hapless man owing $50,000 to a gangster named Fingers (Andy Garcia), so-called because he takes the digits of gamblers who don't pay up. Since the stock...Read the entire review

The Movie:

In late 1937, one of the most harrowing atrocities of the 20th century took place in China's then-capital of Nanking. Japanese imperial forces invaded the walled city after a series of punishing air raids, only to then engage in a systematic reign of rape, torture and murder. Nanking, a documentary chronicling that horror, is a truly gut-wrenching experience -- but it is as essential as it is nearly unendurable.

Directors Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman make effective use of vintage newsreel footage that shows Nanking's bombing and occupation. But the spoken word is what really carries the most power here. Wealthy families and foreigners managed to evacuate Nanking before Japanese soldiers reached the city. For the hundreds of thousands of citizens not so lucky, however, what followed was a living hell.

The remembrances of elderly Chinese survivors are parti...Read the entire review

The Movie

For his first film in nearly a decade, writer/director Gregory Nava dives headfirst into the seamy, sad world of young Mexican women and the murderous individuals preying upon them near the United States/Mexico border. It's a topic certainly worth exploration (the film begins with exposition and culminates with the chilling caption "inspired by true events") and one that seems positively ripe with dramatic possibilities. Yet, Bordertown, filmed in 2006 but only just now being released (straight to DVD) is a soap opera masquerading as a issue-driven thriller -- its stars aren't really engaged and the tendency toward sensational set-pieces undermines whatever points Nava is trying to make. This is, after all, a nail-biter that makes time for a Juanes mini-concert.

Jennifer Lopez, reuniting with her Selena director, stars as Lauren Adrian, a hard-bitten, a...Read the entire review

The Film:
Back in 1991 or 1992 there was an article in Spin about the breakup of NWA that featured and interview with Eazy E, which to this day remains one of the funniest things I've ever read. I was so inspired by this article, and what Eazy E had to say, that I wrote a screenplay called In Effect, which was going to be a mockumentary about a gangsta rap group in the vein of This is Spinal Tap. My friend Paul wrote some great songs, including "The Only Good Whitey Is a Dead Whitey" and "Jan Brady's P***y." Unfortunately, before we could ever get around to making the film, Chris Rock made a film called CB4, followed by Rusty Cundieff's Fear of a Black Hat, both of which tried--with varying degrees of failure--to be the Spinal Tap of rap. And while I can find faults and shortcomings in both CB4 and Fear of a Black Hat, the one positive t...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The Killing Floor is reminiscent of the old thrillers that used to populate HBO and Showtime in the early 1990s before being dumped onto VHS in bargain rental bins. It's cheaply made, with enough suspicious characters, not-too-explicit sex, and the occasional dead body to keep things mildly interesting as a mystery.

In this movie, Marc Blucas plays a young, solipsistic literary agent, David Lamont, who specializes in horror writers. Apparently, business is good for horror literary agents (who knew?) as he's extremely in demand and has a doting personal assistant, played by Shiri Appleby of Swimf@n and Roswell fame, who takes his verbal abusiveness with a mousiness that's almost unbelievable. He's rich and successful enough to be able to rent an enormous luxury penthouse apartment in New York City and catch the eye of a pretty tenant named Audre...Read the entire review

The Movie:

In The Wendell Baker Story, our title character, played by Luke Wilson, quips that "it takes a certain strength of character to endure the occasional failure." That's probably true. If so, this gaping yawn of a comedy has likely given Luke Wilson, who wrote the film and co-directed with his brother Andrew, more character than could safely fit inside the Houston Astrodome.

It's not for lack of talent that this flick fizzles. Wilson has assembled a capable cast that includes Harry Dean Stanton, Seymour Cassel, Eva Mendes, Will Ferrell, Eddie Griffin, Kris Kristofferson and Wilson's brother, Owen. Problem is, there just isn't a heck of a lot for anyone to do. The Wendell Baker Story strives for a laidback vibe nestled somewhere between Seventies-era Robert Altman and the hipster cool of Ocean's Eleven. Unfortunately, laidback can easily morph into listl...Read the entire review

The Movie

Some dark comedies make the mistake of wandering too far into the black. The key is that the deaths – a hallmark of the genre – must be those of the unlikable or, at least, minor characters.

Despite an impressive little body count, Keeping Mum manages to stay cheerful throughout.

The story follows Walter Goodfellow, the vicar of Little Wallop, and his suffering family. His wife Gloria is contemplating an affair with her golf pro, his daughter Holly is sleeping with all comers and young Petey is the constant target of the school bullies.

Not all of these problems can be laid at the feet of Walter, but if he wasn't so wrapped up in the minutiae of church, he could likely solve them all.

Enter Grace Hawkins, the new housekeeper and a dark vision of Mary Poppins, who is compelled to keep the family together, though her reasons for it are not immediately apparent. Read the entire review

It seems like most of the exciting films that are being made today arecreated without the help of a studio.  Since the big players wanta guaranteed hit for the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars thatthey are putting up, they tend to go with safe (read: dull) projects: actionfilms, remakes of old TV shows, and sequels.  To watch a film thatis new and original you have to go either to the output of a foreign countryor with an independent film, and I find myself enjoying those types offilms more often than not.  One recent independent film that I wasable to see was Love Comes to the Executioner, a unique and quirkydark comedy.  It has some amusing dialog and a few scenes that workednicely, but wasn't quite able to create as many laughs as the premise wouldindicate.

Heck Prigusivac (Jonathan...Read the entire review

The Movie

Horror movie marketing lesson #1-A: No matter how bad your movie is, if someone at a distributor thinks they can package the thing to look enticing, it will eventually find distribution. No matter how tiresome, stupid, derivative, and mindless it is. Case #28,675: The Choke, which comes to DVD courtesy of Veloicty Entertainment, aka the low end cheapie department of the normally superlative ThinkFilm banner.

But as a guy who loves to give any horror flick a shot, be it studio-borne, foreign, or mega-low-budget, I hit play on The Choke hoping to find a little buried treasure before coming here to tell you all about it. Sadly, that well of good will lasted only about 12 minutes, because that's when I realized that The Choke is one of the silliest, loudest, and most aggravating slasher retreads since, say, 1984 -- which is when these flicks were churned out...Read the entire review

The Movie

I really liked Southern Justice a lot better when it was called Heavy Southern Nights. I'm not clear why this entirely unremarkable thriller changed its name for video release, but either way, writer/director M.D. Selig's overheated drama at least sounds interesting when it's got a psuedo-porn title - as it stands, Southern Justice evokes images of good 'ol boys mountin' up in their mud-splattered Ford Broncos, shotguns in tow. Maybe, in retrospect, M.D. Selig would've been better off taking his backers' money and making a really hot porn with the Heavy Southern Nights title - he certainly relies upon ample doses of female nudity, abusive men and a violent, convoluted plot that doesn't make much sense upon first glance or closer examination.

Heavy South--, uh, Southern Justice concerns ex-military sniper Slim Manning (auteur M....Read the entire review

The Movie

What with movies like Phone Booth and Cellular hitting the multiplex screens (and making some solid coin), it only stands to reason that we'd eventually get a few copycat thrillers. The reason you're only hearing of Beeper now is that, because it's pretty bad, it's been sitting on a shelf somewhere, just waiting to be purchased and distributed.

Starring Ed Quinn (a guy I've never heard of) and featuring indie folks like Joey Lauren Adams and Harvey Keitel, Beeper might look like a half-solid weeknight rental...

Actually, come to think of it, no it doesn't.

Picture the world's most conventional kidnapping thriller, and then set the thing in India ... or director Jack Sholder's closest approximation of India. (Some of the footage looks pretty authentic, while some of it looks like a ridiculously blatant collection of sets.)

Quinn plays Richard Avery,...Read the entire review

Curse you Jack the Ripper! No, not for all that White Chapel rot. Too much time has passed, and kicking you for killing and vivisecting all those prostitutes would be like beating a dead dog for the piddle he once left on the carpet. While all is definitely not forgiven, it is more or less forgotten, about as current in the collective memory as the names of the original members of Menudo. No, you need to be damned for the ersatz entertainment effect you've had on the media, be it sound, sight, or a combination of both. Since you managed to find a way to avoid capture and lapse into mythos, moviemakers and TV executives have tried to retrofit your story into everyone's artistic business, from semi-authentic recreations of your crimes, to the private lives of Sherlock and Katie Holmes.

Whether you were a member of royalty, or some surgeon who needed a little part-time practice on the London trollops, ...Read the entire review

Let me start by saying that 2004 must have been a banner year for Robert Moresco, the Writer/Director/Producer of One Eyed King (2001). Moresco saw the release of that film, as well as, the television series, Millenium: The Complete First & Second Season, which he wrote and produced, onto DVD. Even more importantly, he also witnessed the theatrical release of Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby, a film which he produced and is now garnering both critical and commercial accolades. This man definitely has a talent, but I think that talent is producing, rather than directing.

New York is synonymous with Italian Mob movies, but Irish Mob films are a rarer breed. Especially those that are actually set in the stomping grounds of the real life "Westies" gang, that of Hell's Kitchen. The only one that immediately springs to mind is the Sean Penn classic...Read the entire review