It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment when liking our leaders became more important than respecting them. I am no expert on politics, but I have always gauged that moment to have occurred in 1992, when then-candidate Bill Clinton answered a question from the audience during a campaign appearance about whether he wore boxers or briefs. Later, President George H.W. Bush refused to answer the same question, believing his underwear to be none of anybody’s business. He was right, of course, but he lost the election anyway. Clinton went on to become a two-term president, and Bush went home…
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After lacerating rock musicians, small town theater troupes and dog shows, Christopher Guest’s new film “For Your Consideration” takes on Hollywood and a topic near and dear to this website’s heart… Academy Award buzz. After a movie website predicts Oscar gold for the B-List cast of a movie that hasn’t even finished filming, the set is thrown into a tizzy… with predictable results.

Very predictable results. While watching this toothless satire, I was reminded of a tagline from a film noir poster that read: “No one is who they seem.” The opposite is true here. Every character is exactly…
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There will been many comparisons between Darren Aranofsky’s new film “The Fountain” and “2001.” This is not surprising, given that both films are thematically driven sci-fi epics that feature: (1) long voyages through space and (2) monkey cameos.

But tonally, the two films could not be more different. Kubrick’s masterpiece is cinema as mathematics, a ruthlessly rational argument that human evolution has been stymied by our dependence on technology. “The Fountain,” on the other hand, is an unapologetically emotional exploration of love and death; it does not try to make you think. It tries to make you feel…
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Every year, critics present one independent film with the “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” seal of crossover approval. The seal, given with the condescending tone normally associated with a Special Olympics medal ceremony, is meant to assure mainstream filmgoers that an indie is neither too urban nor gay to offend, and not too esoteric to confuse.

This year, critics have chosen to champion the inoffensive, yet thoroughly enjoyable road movie, “Little Miss Sunshine.” In it, a likeable family from Arizona, the Hoovers, drive their adorable, eight-year-old daughter Olive to San Diego so that she can compete in a children’s…
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Clint Eastwood’s been on a roll. His last two films, “Mystic River” and “Million Dollar Baby” were justifiably feted by many critics as the best of their respective years. They were character pieces that earned their kudos the hard way, through touching, authentic performances and gripping stories that Eastwood allowed to take root in their own time. As an actor, he may have made his name with flashy gunfights and tough guy talk, but as a director, he’s always been at his best delivering intimate moments in which real people strain under the weight of real problems.

In his…
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Martin Scorsese has been teetering on the edge of irrelevance for a decade now. With the plodding “Gangs of New York” and the uneven, episodic “The Aviator,” the director who made some of the finest fever dreams of the 1970′s (Taxi Driver), 1980′s (Raging Bull) and 1990′s (Goodfellas), was relegated to making bloodless, historical duds with stories that were well researched, but not well told. Some wondered if the man who was playing himself in American Express commercials and Saturday Night Live skits had lost his nerve. There were even whispered comparisons to Francis Ford Coppola’s late career crash…
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Kate Winslet’s character Ann Stanton lies in bed, voluptuous and vulnerable, her exquisite face flushed, her hands bashfully covering her naked breasts. She looks over expectantly at Jude Law’s Jack Burden, her eyes offering him the world. But Burden demurs. Later, he explains, in one of the film’s many ponderous voice overs, that he chose to deny himself the fleeting pleasure of a romantic tryst, so as to preserve their friendship.

This scene, in one dull thud, sums up the primary weakness of Steven Zaillian’s handsomely mounted, but emotionally inert adaptation of the classic novel, “All the King’s Men.”…
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Today’s film noir fans are a sad, desperate lot. With the announcement of every new noir project, they breathlessly hope for the gritty brilliance of “Devil in a Blue Dress” or the whiplash twists and turns of “L.A. Confidential,” but usually find themselves sighing through the muddled likes of a “Mulholland Falls” or the overheated operatics of “Romeo Is Bleeding.” So when it was announced that Brian De Palma was attached to direct one of the most beloved books in the noir canon, James Elroy’s “The Black Dahlia,” fans cheered. Surely, the director of stylish cocktails like “Body Double,” “Blow…
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