Past Stories
EL CANTANTE
Hector "The Voice" Lavoe–Nuyorican singer whose teasing, tapping records introduced the world to salsa–had as many vices as he had hit songs. It’s clear from the first scene that he won’t survi...
Rocket Science
High schooler Ben Wekselbaum (Nicholas D’Agosto) is such an alpha dog debator, he starts his Affirmative Statement on farming resolutions with a moment of silence. But when he chokes up during the state finals, he costs h...
Any Amour Questions?
French actress Julie Delpy, a blonde with perfect fox features, has spent her career kissing her way through Paris in a series of swoony, talky romances beloved by girls with brains. Now, she’s written and directed her ow...
Becoming Jane
If Britney Spears published a book on good parenting, it’d be no less a contradictory puzzle than Jane Austen’s novels. Historians have long been bedeviled by how an innocent spinster who lived alone with her unmarr...
Delirious
20-year-old Toby (Michael Pitt) is an struggling actor who lives in a dumpster; he’d be thrilled to wait tables. The mop-headed blonde himbo is so sweetly incapable of guile, he must have been hit on the head with a rock....
Penelope
A precocious fairy tale made for and starring people too old for whimsy, Penelope (Christina Ricci) is an heiress cursed with a pig nose that will only turn pert when truly loved by a blueblood hottie. Naturally, her status-con...
Penis Whimsy
In 600 years, the thesaurus will be one page long and devoted to "dick." It won’t need another word. In this balls-out comedy, it reigns supreme as noun, verb, and adjective—a lexicon that would welcome th...
Resurrecting the Champ
Rod Lurie’s unsentimental drama about a story-hungry reporter named Erik (Josh Hartnett) milking a homeless boxer (Samuel L. Jackson) for a scoop veers away from the predictable. There’s no hugs, no tender boxing mo...
Ignorance Isn’t Exactly Bliss
Chris Gorak’s bone-chiller about a terrorist attack in Los Angeles was shot between 9-11 and Hurricane Katrina but feels like a direct response to both. In the nouveau-boho eastside hills, Lexi and Brad (Mary McCormack an...
Deep Water
Donald Crowhurst was close to being the ideal British man: he had pluck, brains, invention, and charm. The two things he didn’t have were money and acclaim, so in 1968, he hocked everything he owned and along with eight o...
Comedy Blue Balls
The obesity epidemic continues to infect this summer’s slap-happy comedies with Dan Fogler, Tony-winner, as the latest chubby, bumbling anti-hero. Nothing against the burliness of leading men like Fogler, Seth Rogen, and ...
The Nines
"It’s cool, I’m only a cop on TV," breezes Gary (Ryan Reynolds) as he scores crack from a suspicious dealer. From there, the disconnect widens. Sentenced to house arrest for his drug, hooker and arson bing...
Trapped in the Closet
R. Kelly’s first 12 chapters of Trapped in the Closet established him as hip-hop’s Andy Kaufman. His morality farce of cheatin’ and lyin’ was day time garbage elevated to brilliance by Kells’ deadp...
3:10 to Yuma
James Mangold’s dark western opens with teenager William Evans who tears through pulp novels about frontier gunslingers. His dad Dan (Christian Bale) doesn’t measure up: bullies torch their barn, threaten them with ...
In the Shadow of the Moon
This Sundance award-winning documentary about NASA’s brief binge of shooting men to the moon is another encyclopedic chronicle of talking heads and footage. But what footage! Dune buggies kicking up interstellar dust, roc...
The Chronicles of Bosnia
The city of Sarajevo sits in the center of a basin surrounded by hills. Its houses and markets–and newer, larger markets–stretch up to the peaks like strung Christmas lights. After last decade’s four-year sieg...
Spiritual Poverty
A Wes Anderson film is like a snow globe: it’s hermetically sealed, precious, and pointless. Furthermore, there’s only one possible template—wealthy man-child considers wresting with his issues, declines, and...
Great World of Sound
While the American Idol kids get their makeovers photographed by Us Weekly, Craig Zobel’s soul-crushing docudrama slums in the real rags-to-rags tragedy of the lowest rung of the music industry. Pat Healy and Kene Hollida...
Ira & Abby
Kissing Jessica Stein, writer-actress Jennifer Westfeldt’s debut film, set her reputation as a comedienne who served up classic romcom fare with a cheeky twist. Her tentative lesbian love match drew more from Woody Allen ...
DECEMBERBOYS
The coast of Australia is an apt setting for Rod Hardy’s precious drama: It’s Beaches for men. Four cloyingly nicknamed orphans–Misty, Spark, Spit, and Maps (Lee Cormie, Christian Byers, James Fraser, and a qu...
The Assassination of Jesse James
Bob Ford was 20-years-old when he begged to join Jesse James’ infamous gang of train robbers. "I’m destined for great things," he puffed. By the end of the year, Ford was more famous than President Arthur ...
Say Cheeeeese
Curb Your Enthusiasm, on which comedian Jeff Garlin lumbers around as Larry David’s best friend, strongly influences his debut as a writer and director. The cast (which includes Sarah Silverman, Amy Sedaris, and Bonnie Hu...
The Beast Within
By Amy Nicholson On days when phones keep ringing and traffic chokes the route home, we dream of running off into the peaceful woods. Of course, we know that the woods aren’t really any more restful; instead of tiptoeing...
Eastern Promises
David Cronenberg can make a summer afternoon give you the chills. Here, his London is a dead ringer for shadowy Moscow–or Hell. A 14-year-old prostitute and junky has just died in childbirth, leaving plucky midwife Anna (...
Sydney White
This surprisingly clever coed reworking of Snow White does for dorks what Revenge of the Nerds did for, well, you know. Amanda Bynes stars as our nurturing heroine, a plumber’s daughter and incoming Freshman whose kewpie ...
