Past Stories
Explicit Ills
Explicit Ills is first-time writer/director Mark Webber’s gritty paean to his home city of Philadelphia. It is sometimes spot on and absorbing about class, race and that bitch, poverty, but it falls into paint-by-numbers ...
The Union
The Union is a wonderful movie about why pot became illegal, the absurdity of it remaining illegal and how it remains a potent force in daily life despite the prohibition. The movie is a Canadian take on the subject, ably…
The Unknown Woman
Winner of five Donatello Awards (the Italian equivalent of the Oscars), director Giuseppe Tornatore turns darkly away from his much-lauded Cinema Paradiso with this gritty, fascinating look at a Ukrainian sex slave’s atte...
The Edge of Love
The Edge of Love by director John Maybury is a sometimes entertaining, sometimes plodding, talented mess. It is stuffed with ambitions of the highest order—in the overly literary script, the mannered yet only intermittent...
Resolved
The oft-stigmatized students of high school speech and debate programs take center stage in this documentary that is less about the personal stories and characters involved in debate than the overwhelming notion that we as a so...
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
Nietzsche said, when you stare at the abyss long enough, the abyss stares back at you. You better fuggin’ believe the abyss is staring back at you in this movie—an empty, nihilistic void that swallows all art, brain...
PHOEBE IN WONDERLAND
Phoebe in Wonderland is a fine movie, which unfortunately was given the “we don’t know what to do with this” treatment in its theatrical release. After all, it doesn’t really hit the studios’ favor...
DEPECHE MODE: THE DARK PROGRESSION
Be warned . . . watching this new “unauthorized” documentary on Depeche Mode will make you spend money. You’ll want to immediately run out and buy (or download) all your old faves from the ‘80s era to wa...
GRAN TORINO
Clint Eastwood’s latest directorial effort—and last foray into acting, so he says—is one of those movies that can be called compelling without being called good. In Gran Torino, Eastwood plays Walt “don&...
REVOLUTIONARY ROAD
Suburbia isn’t exactly the most literary setting for all things profound—and then that’s always the point. Richard Yates’ 1961 book, Revolutionary Road, sought to demonstrate that the idyllic outward app...
THE RAMEN GIRL
Ah, direct to video. Just knowing that going in should set your expectations pretty low for The Ramen Girl. Confused about whether it’s a coming-of-age film, a food movie, or a romantic comedy—it is all these things...
VALKYRIE
It was one hell of a “Merry Christmas!”—but that’s what the studios said to us when they released Valkyrie, Tom Cruise’s “plot against Hitler” Nazi pic, on Christmas Day 2008. Pass the ...
JCVD
You remember Jean-Claude Van Damme, don’t you? Chances are you do, but just saying his name makes you smirk or laugh dismissively. His “big” films back in the day weren’t exactly Oscar-caliber dramas and...
Wendy and Lucy
The most tragic part of Wendy and Lucy—director Kelly Reichardt’s tale of a young Alaska-bound woman and her dog—is not so much how things end up with them but that the protag is so downtrodden in life that sh...
Bride Wars
Ostensibly a sort of female buddy flick disguised as a romantic comedy, Bride Wars succeeds in making the bonds of friendship seem more valuable than the bonds of matrimony. On almost every other level, however, it fails misera...
The Wrestler
Should Mickey Rourke have won the Oscar for his performance as Randy “The Ram” Robinson? The answer is: Dunno, but it’s kind of a shame he didn’t. Rourke’s life has been as abusive as The Ram&rsquo...
Lost in Austen
Imagine if you stepped through a hidden door in your bathroom and found yourself in Pride and Prejudice. That’s what happens to Amanda Price (Jemima Rooper) in this British mini-series repackaged here as a feature film. A...
The Small Screen
Slumdog Millionaire
Slumdog’s Oscar haul—eight of ‘em, including Best Picture, Best Director & Best Adapted Screenplay—seems a little bewildering. It’s certainly a good film, but is it the kind...
The Small Screen
Rachel Getting Married
Directed by Jonathan Demme, and featuring an Oscar-nominated performance by Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married is hard to watch at times because it’s so damn real. We’ve all sat through aw...
The Small Screen
Milk
Simply put, Milk is a moving film about a guy who wanted to change the way things worked, and actually did so, which is not an easy thing to accomplish. As Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected…
The Small Screen
Happy-Go-Lucky
Is it possible to exist in modern life with a positive mental attitude? Can having such an attitude become infectious for others? In Mike Leigh’s latest, Happy-Go-Lucky, Poppy (Sally Hawkins) is an elementa...
The Small Screen
I’ve Loved You So Long
French filmmakers sure have a knack for believing that the expression on an actor’s face can tell you more than a host of CGI effects. They are ACTORS after all, and in I’ve Loved ...
The Small Screen
Shadows and Faces
In the way that Lautréamont cut a swath for surrealists, so did John Cassavettes pave the way for indie filmmaking. The Criterion Collection releases of his directorial debut Shadows (1959) and the mast...
The Small Screen
How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
Ethics, that transcendent force usually hidden in a protagonist’s chest for 90% of a movie, comes bubbling out of Simon Pegg (who plays wiseacre Sidney Young) like a relucta...
The Small Screen
Nights in Rodanthe
All you really need to know about Nights in Rodanthe, starring Diane Lane and Richard Gere as a middle-aged couple who fall in love while staying at an inn on an island off the coast of North…
The Small Screen
The Secret Life of Bees
Without its all-star cast, The Secret Life of Bees would be a really strong Hallmark Channel movie, which isn’t all bad. Set in 1964 during unrest rising from the Civil Rights Act, the film follows...
The Small Screen
Lakeview Terrace
Harvey Keitel’s Bad Lieutenant was a hurting bag of addiction and sins; Samuel L. Jackson in Lakeview Terrace is just a really terrible neighbor. Not only does LAPD Officer Abel Turner (Jackson) hat...
BRICK LANE
Based on the acclaimed yet controversial debut novel by Monica Ali, Brick Lane, the movie, will not perhaps satisfy fans of the book, which is the frustrating conundrum of most movies based on literature. Distilling a 500+ page...
