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Born to Kill (1947): B
Robert Wise’s noir is like a proficient but soulless cover song – the eventual Sound of Music auteur knows which black-and-white cords to strike but little idea how to inject his cops-and-crooks tales with an authentically fatalistic mood. Nonetheless, Born to Kill (based on James Gunn’s novel Deadlier Than the Male) has just enough malevolent…
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Art School Confidential (2006): B-
Terry Zwigoff is a bitterly droll misanthropist, and Art School Confidential – his latest pairing with Ghost World collaborator (and famed graphic novelist) Daniel Clowes – finds the director once again taking acidic aim at the socially petty and pompous. Unfortunately, poking fun at the self-important inhabitants of the academic art world is about as…
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Poseidon (2006): C-
Of all the objectionable aspects of Poseidon, Wolfgang Peterson’s remake of 1972’s disaster classic The Poseidon Adventure, the most noxious is the revelation that Kurt Russell’s Robert Ramsey – aiding survivors aboard the titular luxury cruiser after it’s flipped upside-down by a “rogue wave” – happens to be a Giuliani-esque former mayor of New York…
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United 93 (2006): C+
Two days after seeing United 93, I remain somewhat unsure of how to write about it. This isn’t because there’s nothing to say about Paul Greengrass’ recreation of the tragic events onboard the titular 9/11 hijacked plane – as well as the surprise, confusion, and incompetence that characterized the responses at various ground control centers…
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Body Snatchers (1993): B-
Abel Ferrara teamed with B-horror legends Larry Cohen (who co-conceived the story) and Stuart Gordon (who co-wrote the script) for Body Snatchers, a second remake of Don Siegel’s 1956 classic about extraterrestrials’ plans to conquer the planet via the creation of pod people. Yet despite its seemingly can’t-miss creative trio, the film turned out to…
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Bad Lieutenant (1992): A
Twelve minutes and twenty-one seconds into Bad Lieutenant, Abel Ferrara has Harvey Keitel’s nameless dirty cop prance about in the nude, pathetically weeping with his arms outstretched, in a room shared by two whores. What follows is a descent into sinful sordidness of the most spectacular sort, with Keitel – on the trail of two…
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Serenity (2005): B
Having never watched Firefly – Joss Whedon’s short-lived Old West-meets-Star Trek TV series – I’m in no position to make comparisons between it and Whedon’s cinematic spin-off Serenity. On its own, however, this satisfying science-fiction saga has enough richly drawn characters and clever writing to make up for the inescapable impression that it’s a condensed…
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Flightplan (2005): C
Back in Panic Room protective mommy mode, Jodie Foster searches for her missing child on an enormous airplane in Flightplan, a knuckleheaded thriller that apes David Fincher’s style and repugnantly exploits contemporary terrorism-related anxieties for cheap suspense. Accompanying her dead husband’s body from Germany to Long Island, mourning widow Kyle Pratt (Foster) finds her sanity…
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Friends with Money (2006): C+
Despite its focus on character above plot, Nicole Holofcener’s Friends with Money somehow fails to feature protagonists who boast more than a figurative purpose. Four girlfriends regularly meet for dinner to overtly discuss each others’ personal problems and covertly express their own neurotic hang-ups: fashionista and fag-hag Jane (Frances McDormand) no longer washes her hair…
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King of New York (1990): B+
Though disavowed by director Abel Ferrara (on a recent DVD commentary track) as polished to the point of being “fascistic,” King of New York remains deliciously indecent, its extravagantly stylish mise-en-scène and cast of well-known faces doing nothing to overshadow the rampant degeneracy and moral/spiritual confliction that permeates this urban gangster saga. Ruthless drug kingpin…
