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Maria Full of Grace (2004): B+
Without the stunning, serenely revealing face of lead actress Catalina Sandino Moreno, Joshua Marston’s Maria Full of Grace might be nothing more than a glorified example of manipulative melodrama. Marston’s potentially sensational story concerns Maria (Marston), a young Columbian girl who – faced with a dead-end life working at an exploitive flower factory and living…
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Hero (2002): B+
Zhang Yimou’s rise to prominence as a result of the long-delayed Hero (it’s been sitting on a Miramax shelf since 2002) is mildly depressing. It’s not that the film is disappointing – in fact, it’s a stunning, visually breathtaking martial arts extravaganza – but that Yimou, a director known for subtle human dramas such as…
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Alien vs. Predator (2004): C
Acid blood-dripping insectoid aliens clash with dreadlocked intergalactic big-game hunters in Alien vs. Predator (or AVP, for those who like to conserve words), and the central question posed by such a heavyweight cinematic showdown is: Who are we supposed to root for? Is it the Aliens, the rabid, dual-mouthed “others” that see humans as convenient…
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Garden State (2004)
(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) In Zach Braff’s sincere Garden State, depressed, heavily medicated L.A. actor Andrew Largeman (Braff) returns to New Jersey to attend his mother’s funeral and winds up embarking on a four-day journey of self-discovery in which he parties with his grave-digging childhood friend (Peter Sarsgaard), falls in love with an…
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Catwoman (2004): D
Tossing history, taste and common sense to the litter box, Catwoman foolishly reimagines Batman’s foxy feline nemesis as a pseudo-hero who, as played by Halle Berry, fights crime while outfitted in a ridiculous, and ridiculously revealing, S&M leather get-up. Berry is the type of actress whose most captivating work is done by her body, and…
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The Watcher (2000): D
Who watches The Watcher? Probably no one, and with good reason. One of the lamest serial killer thrillers of the post-Silence of the Lambs era, this jarringly incompetent film (by music video vet Joe Charbanic) has the bad sense to cast Keanu Reeves – he of the vacant, dim-bulb charm – as a homicidal maniac…
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Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (2004): C-
I have a confession to make: In the celebrity feud of 2004, I side with Lindsay Lohan and against Hillary Duff. That said, I could barely stand Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, last year’s pre-Mean Girls Lohan vehicle which – with its inattention to narrative or character development (aside from watered-down after-school special lessons)…
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Taking Lives (2004): D+
As the late Henny Youngman might have said, if this is what the serial killer genre has come to, take my life, please! Perhaps the most derivative Hollywood serial killer thriller since, um, well, since the last one, Taking Lives involves Angelina Jolie’s pseudo-psychic F.B.I. agent (she lies in victims’ graves to “understand” what happened…
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Godsend (2004): C
Here are the three things I learned from Nick Hamm’s Godsend: Don’t ever let your kid hang out alone on a New York City sidewalk while you sign a credit card receipt in a store; don’t ever trust Robert DeNiro if he offers you a deal too good to be true; and don’t ever attempt…
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50 First Dates (2004): C-
Unless you like your romantic comedies light on romance and even lighter on comedy, I’d suggest shunning Adam Sandler’s 50 First Dates at all costs. Although it reunites Sandler and Barrymore (who previously paired up in the superior, but still mediocre, The Wedding Singer), this dopey film has virtually nothing going for it but its…
