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Brokeback Mountain (2005): C+
Despite the ever-swelling chorus of effusive praise being sung for Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee’s mainstream “gay cowboy” romance turns out to be as regressively conservative as it is trailblazing same-sex cinema. Written by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana (based on Annie Proulx’s acclaimed The New Yorker short story), this quite traditional tale of love torn…
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King Kong (2005): C+
(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) “It was beauty killed the beast,” said movie director Carl Denham at the conclusion of 1933’s King Kong, and one might say that it’s unbridled love – for that very same cinematic ape adventure – that ultimately does in Peter Jackson’s ultra-mega-deluxe holiday season remake. A spectacle of CGI…
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The New World (2005): A
Terrence Malick goes four-for-four with The New World, his latest unqualified masterwork (following Badlands, Days of Heaven, and The Thin Red Line) about Europeans’ arrival on the American continent in 1607. A sumptuous tone poem of epic emotional proportions, Malick’s latest in many ways structurally evokes 1998’s Line, with which it shares not only countless…
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Match Point (2005): C+
Heralded at this year’s Cannes Film Festival as Woody Allen’s return to form, Match Point instead turns out to be merely a dull, slightly objectionable rehash of Crimes and Misdemeanors whose novelty stems primarily from being set in London rather than Manhattan. Aside from foreign accents and slightly different scenery – though not that different,…
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Rent (2005): C
It’s difficult to watch Rent and not constantly think of Team America: World Police’s satiric song “Everyone has AIDS,” since nearly everyone in Jonathan Larson’s early ‘90s Manhattan-set musical reworking of La Bohème really does have AIDS. Unfortunately, the memory of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s goofy marionettes singing about disease is the most entertaining…
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Wolf Creek (2005): A
Raw, nasty and unnerving as hell, Wolf Creek faithfully and fearlessly assumes the grisly mantle of seminal genre classics The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes, an austere descent into inexplicable, unbridled mayhem devoid of the shallow, suspense-sapping gimmickry (this means you, High Tension and Identity) of contemporary Hollywood horror. Proudly modeled after…
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The White Diamond (2004): A
A superb portrait of the dangers as well as euphoria that can come from chasing one’s most treasured dreams, Werner Herzog’s The White Diamond vividly encapsulates nearly all of the director’s recurring thematic obsessions: adventurers plagued by past tragedies; the beguiling beauty of the untamed wilderness; the sacredness of the world’s age-old mysteries; and contemporary…
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Wheel of Time (2003): B+
Werner Herzog’s interest in the complementary relationship between the physical and spiritual worlds forms the bedrock of Wheel of Time, his sterling documentary about a 2002 gathering of 500,000+ Tibetan Buddhists in Bodh Gaya, India (as well as a later, smaller assembly in Austria) for the sacred Kalachakra ritual presided over by the Dalai Lama.…
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Mysterious Skin (2005): A-
Free of the stylistic show-offery of his prior work, Gregg Araki’s magnificent Mysterious Skin charts the divergent paths of two teenagers – emotionally remote, unbearably cool gay street hustler Neil (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), and nerdy, reclusive mama’s boy Brian (Brady Corbet) – as they attempt to cope with the lingering effects of childhood sexual abuse perpetrated…
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Dinner at Eight (1933): B
Based on George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber’s stage play, Dinner at Eight never transcends its theatrical roots, but that’s not such a bad thing considering how many delectable performances director George Cukor extracts from his illustrious cast. Focused on the events surrounding a hoity-toity dinner party being organized by Millicent Jordan (a shrill Billie…
