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The Rundown (2003): C+
So this is what Sam Peckinpah’s Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia would have been like had it been made with a Hollywood budget and starred a wrestler-turned-actor. The Rundown, Peter Berg’s jokey action/adventure film about a buff bounty hunter (The Rock) sent to a rundown Latin American town called El Dorado to retrieve…
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13 Going on 30 (2004)
(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) Consider 13 Going on 30 as less a movie than a demo reel for Jennifer Garner, the energetic brunette beauty of TV’s Alias. In Gary Winick’s photocopy of Big and (to a lesser extent) Freaky Friday, Garner is Jenna Rink, a thirteen-year-old girl in 1987 suburban New Jersey who,…
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The Alamo (2004)
(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) It would be too easy to just say “Forget The Alamo,” Disney’s new block-blunder about the 1836 battle for the Texas fort between Mexican conqueror Santa Ana’s army and an outnumbered group of American soldiers. But avoiding the film might not be a bad idea. Were The Alamo’s outcome…
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Blowup (1966)
(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) A shallow fashion photographer (David Hemmings) in swinging‘60s London unwittingly captures a murder on film – or does he? – in Michelangelo Antonioni’s acclaimed Blowup. Hemmings’ Thomas is beset by ennui, and is only awakened from his hollow lifestyle of casual sex, materialistic excess, and inactivity after discovering –…
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Hellboy (2004)
(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) The quest for inclusion has, since the introduction of The X-Men in the ‘60s, been the predominant theme in superhero comics, and it’s certainly at the forefront of Guillermo Del Toro’s Hellboy, a humanistic action extravaganza (based on Mike Mignola’s cult comic book) about misfit creatures fighting on the…
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The Ladykillers (2004)
(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) Joel and Ethan Coen’s finest films abound with whimsy and larger-than-life kookiness, but misanthropic wit just isn’t their forte. With The Ladykillers, an update of the 1955 black comedy classic that starred Alec Guinness as a creepy criminal genius, the writing/directing duo attempt to enliven their skewed absurdity with…
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Rules of the Game (1939)
(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) One of Citizen Kane’s few equals, Jean Renoir’s Rules of the Game is a gorgeous, gracefully astute critique of pre-WWII French aristocracy. Renoir, using luscious deep-focus cinematography reminiscent of Welles’ classic, details the facetious games of love played by both the upstairs (i.e. rich) and downstairs (i.e. servants) guests…
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Secret Window (2004)
(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) Throughout his extensive career, Stephen King has habitually attempted (in novels such as The Dark Half and Misery) to confront the relationship between the artist and his work, and that thematic preoccupation once again comes into play in David Koepp’s Secret Window. Adapted from a King novella, the film…
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The Party (1968): C
After the back-to-back successes of The Pink Panther and its sequel A Shot in the Dark, Blake Edwards and Peter Sellers – perhaps thinking that anything they immortalized on film would be uproarious – re-teamed to make the largely improvised The Party, a middling comedy that plays like leftovers from the Panther films. Sellers stars…
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A Shot in the Dark (1964): B+
“Give me ten men like Clouseau and I could destroy the world!” rages police commissioner Dreyfus (Herbert Lom) about his blundering French inspector in the second Pink Panther film A Shot in the Dark. What writer/director Blake Edwards should have given this wacky film, however, was a bit more of the pink feline. Where’s the…
