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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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Abercrombie Park
Josh Hartnett and Diane Kruger may be clothing catalog-cute, but their new movie Wicker Park is just another ugly Hollywood adaptation of a superior foreign film (in this case, Gilles Mimouni’s L’Appartement). I slander this Single White Female-meets-Vertigo silliness at Slant magazine: Wicker Park P.S. I’ve also got new reviews of AVP and Hero below.
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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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Constructing Past and Present
Mira Nair’s Vanity Fair, an adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s acclaimed novel, adds a dose of modern “you go girl” feminism” – as well as some Indian flavor – to the nineteenth-century British proceedings. Christoffer Boe’s Reconstruction, winner of the Camera d’Or at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, is a semi-pretentious rumination about love, fate,…
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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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Bloody Hell
Rampant killing is a prominent feature of two upcoming releases, but only one will get your blood pumping. Bang Rajan, an acclaimed hit from Thailand about a famous 18-century battle between the Siamese and Burmese, is a stirring, violent epic about national pride and personal sacrifice. Suspect Zero, on the other hand, is a dunderheaded…
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28 and counting
My birthday was this past Friday and, besides celebrating with friends, I spent part of the day writing two new reviews for Slant magazine. My critiques of the awful Exorcist: The Beginning and the unremarkable I Am David (a family film which comes out in late October) are now available for your Monday morning reading…
