“Guys just gotta have fun” is the final line, a posthumous and doubtless apocryphal voiceover of Bob Crane (played by Greg Kinnear) in the biopic Auto Focus, directed by Paul Schrader. Based on the book The Murder of Bob Crane by Robert Graysmith, the film is about the rise and fall of a talented actor from Connecticut […]
Bad Company, directed by Joel Schumacher, is the third recent film, after The Peacekeeper (1997) and this year’s The Sum of All Fears, to feature a nuclear suitcase bomb of Russian origin on the loose. One day Jake Hayes (played by squeaky-voiced Chris Rock) is captured in Jersey City by CIA operatives led by Gaylord Oakes (played by
Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) is a Canadian film featuring the Inuits of the Arctic Circle. Featuring a mythic story, handed down through oral tradition over the generations, Atanarjuat is primarily of anthropological interest. Most of the 172 minutes of film footage deals with how a small indigenous population manages to stay alive in Igloolik, Nunavut Territory, perhaps
In Amy’s Orgasm, directed by Julie Davis, Amy Mandell had a disappointing love affair, wrote a book with advice to women in the same boat, entitled “Why Love Doesn’t Work,” and is sought after by talk show hosts. Although her thesis is that women do not need men to be fulfilled, one talk show host, sexist
American Girl, directed by Jordan Brady, is presumably an answer to American Beauty (1999). Whereas American Beauty portrays the boredom of antiseptic middle class suburban life, American Girl is about a dysfunctional family among poor whites. Big John Grubb (played by Chris Mulkey), who killed two men during a fight, is serving a life sentence at Pendleton State Prison.
The Accidental Spy (Dak miu mai shing) directed by Jackie Chan, again has the amiable kungfu artist leaping from tall buildings and crashing through open markets in endless chase scenes, with the eye candy of his nude body (rear but not pubic) on display for several minutes. The story is, as always, incidental, but the cinematography
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Those who saw the film Enigma last year may have asked whether the Germans changed their codes when an Enigma machine was found missing. Presumably to answer that question, we now have All the Queen’s Men, directed by Sefan Ruzowitsky. At the beginning of the film, titles tell us that Puff Platoons, composed of men dressed as women,
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Fathers are not well understood by their wives or daughters, according to About Schmidt, a film based on the novel by Louis Begley. When the film begins, Warren Schmidt (played by Jack Nicholson) awaits the arrival of 5:00 PM to leave his office at Woodmen Insurance Company in Omaha so that he can drive to his
8 Women (8 Femmes), directed by François Ozon, takes place at Christmas in a snowbound family estate in the 1950s, thus the French answer to Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap (1952). Early in the film, Marcel (played by Dominique Lamure), the husband and only man in the story, is exposed as having been stabbed fatally in
“Dozens” is a verbal game, with roots in Africa, in which one person insults (raps) another, a game that goes back and forth. Now known as “rap,” the contest is set to a rhythmic beat (iambic pentameter) nowadays, though rap music is a monologue when the villain is the social system. In 8 Mile, Jimmy