Archive for May, 2003

South Park

There’s something to offend just about everyone in “South Park: Bigger, Longer And Uncut.” It’s rude, crude, vulgar, racist and sick. The sad part is that I enjoyed the film. I laughed a lot, and if it weren’t for the excessive musical numbers, I would have given it my highest rating. Read the rest of this entry »

Frailty DVD

In my lifetime, I have only had occasion to watch two movies through the gaps between my fingers, not counting the last three Pauley Shore films. Both “The Exorcist” and “Jaws” generated the unwilling response, perhaps because those two films managed to depict their fantasy world with such reality (okay, so the shark looks fake by today’s standards). Read the rest of this entry »

The Endurance: Shackleton’s Antarctic Expedition

Making history come alive is always a daunting task, especially if the medium is documentary film. I can understand audience’s aversion to documentaries. Most of us associate documentaries with those grainy, black and white 16mm films we were forced to sit through in high school. You remember them, the ones with flat narration, grade school graphics and no sense of wonder. Read the rest of this entry »

8mm.

Oh, the horror! The inhumanity! The drudgery of having to sit through another neo-noir thriller that barely has time to get on its feet before it stumbles under the weight of a top-heavy performance by Nicolas Cage, seamy direction by Joel Schumacher, and a patchwork script by that guy who wrote “Seven.” Read the rest of this entry »

Films Review June

ABOUT SCHMIDT (R)

Jack Nicholson delivers a heartfelt performance as Warren Schmidt, a 66-year-old insurance salesman trying to adjust to retirement and spending every waking moment with his wife Helen (June Squibb). Looking for meaning in his life, Warren decides to sponsor a Tanzanian boy, hoping that his letters and money will provide him with a sense of responsibility. Read the rest of this entry »

The Jackal

Some things in life bear repeating: A beautiful day; a good beer; A Charlie Brown Christmas Special; great sex; your favorite CD; winning the lottery. Read the rest of this entry »

The Life of David Gale

“The Life of David Gale” is a prime example of what I like to call a windshield wiper movie: scrape away the thin layer of grit and grime and you can see right through it. Even though it pretends to be about something, Alan Parker’s death row drama-thriller ends up being about nothing. Read the rest of this entry »

Wild Things DVD

The weather may be hot in Florida, but no where is it as sultry and sizzling as in the small, elite beach community of Blue Bay, where the rich and infamous play their blue blood parlor games. Robin Leach has taken us to these small corners of the world, where old money stands head and shoulders above everything else, including the law. Read the rest of this entry »

The Stepford Wives

Dropped right into the middle of the Women’s Liberation Movement in 1974, “The Stepford Wives” became a cult classic. The tale of a small village of men who transform their wives into the perfect women had a lot to say about the early 1970s, and under the direction of Bryan Forbes, did so with dark wit and an alarming sense of reality. Read the rest of this entry »

Rambo III

By the time “Rambo III” arrived in 1988, the character of John Rambo had reached mythic proportions. Sylvester Stallone became one of a handful of actors who have starred in two successful big screen franchises. Read the rest of this entry »