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Cure (1997): A-
(Originally posted on 1/14/04) Kyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure, made in 1997 but released in the US in 2001, is — with the possible exception of Takashi Miike’s chilling Audition — the single best horror film I’ve seen this century. Kurosawa (who’s not related to that other Japanese filmmaker), is a genre specialist, and he instills Cure’s…
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Pumping Iron (1977): C
(Originally posted on 1/14/04) Having been bitten by the documentary bug, I finally saw Pumping Iron, the 1977 bodybuilding documentary that gave Arnold Schwarzenegger his first taste of the mainstream spotlight. Yet besides a few revealing moments of Schwarzenegger on the road to his sixth (and final) Mr. Olympia title, the film is a rather…
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Biggie and Tupac (2002): B+
(Originally posted on 1/14/04) Biggie and Tupac, Nick Broomfield’s tantalizing investigation into the rappers’ murders, is short on concrete evidence but long on compelling insinuation. Released shortly after Chuck Philip’s Los Angeles Times report fingered a possible gunman in Tupac Shakur’s death, Broomfield sets his sights on the killing of Christopher “Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace, whose…
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Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer (1992): B+
(Originally posted on 1/14/04) On the cusp of seeing Monster and Nick Broomfield’s new documentary Aileen: The Life and Death of a Serial Killer, I revisited Broomfield’s sterling 1992 documentary on the country’s “first female serial killer,” Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer. Unlike the two newer releases, Broomfield’s original doc focuses less…
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Underworld (2003): C+
(Originally posted on 1/10/04) What do you get when you cross The Matrix with Blade, The Mummy, and countless videogames? Why, you get Underworld, a film so derivative that it barely registers as a film unto itself. Rarely has a film “borrowed” from its genre predecessors this wantonly or profusely, with everything from its color…
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Cold Creek Manor (2003): D
(Originally posted on 1/9/04) Don’t call it a comeback. Sharon Stone returns from moviemaking purgatory — actually, for anyone who’s seen 2000’s god-awful Beautiful Joe, it was more like cinematic hell — with Cold Creek Manor, a worthless thriller about a rich New York City family who buy a house in the sticks and, in…
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Out of Time (2003): C
(Originally posted on 1/8/04) See Denzel steal. See Denzel get framed. See Denzel run around Florida like the hero of a second-rate Hitchcock thriller. Carl Franklin’s Out of Time is so depressingly average, so unworthy of genuine praise or vitriolic scorn, that there’s very little one can say about it. Denzel Washington plays a police…
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Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star (2003): D
(Originally posted on 1/6/04) One my trip to London for New Year’s, British Airways offered a variety of movies for my viewing pleasure. Since I figured I’d try to get some sleep, I chose Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any sleep, and thus I have only myself to blame for suffering…
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Dust in the Wind (1986): B+
(Originally posted on 12/19/03) “What can we do?” asks an aged grandfather in Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s 1986 critical hit Dust in the Wind, a meditative film about one teenage Taiwanese couple’s journey from their rural hometown to the city. The old man’s question, spoken solemnly while sitting alone on the steps of his house, articulates the…
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The Time to Live and the Time to Die (1985): A-
(Originally posted on 12/12/03) The Time to Live and the Time to Die is the first film I’ve seen by renowned Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien, and it strikes me as a near-masterpiece. A challenging, immensely moving semi-autobiographical portrait of two decades in the life of a Chinese family displaced from mainland China to Taiwan in…
