It’s a bad sign that, three weeks after seeing Spartan, David Mamet’s latest thriller, I can scarcely recall what happens. The president’s daughter is kidnapped and apparently sold into the white slave trade (no, I’m not kidding), and stoic military spook Val Kilmer is assigned to rescue her. But when the government decides to cut…

M. Night Shyamalan may be the most overrated mainstream filmmaker working today, and The Village is an instant contender for worst film of the year. As usual, the over-hyped filmmaker uses his trademark directorial flourishes – long, unbroken tracking shots, a focus on lame dialogue (here, not a single contraction!) over action, an ominous sense…

(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) On June 12th, 2000, a young, frazzled man took a bus and its eleven passengers hostage in Rio de Janeiro, sparking a standoff that became the focus of Felipe Lacerda and José Padilha’s masterful documentary Bus 174. The gunman, Sandro do Nascimento, was one of Brazil’s “street kids” –…

(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) Welcome to The Asphalt Jungle, watch it bring men to their knees. In John Huston’s seminal crime flick, a crew of experienced hoods organized by a crafty German mastermind (Sam Jaffe), funded by a duplicitous businessman (Louis Calhern), and led by a bruising goliath (a mesmerizing Sterling Hayden) steals…

Leo (Marisa Parides) writes popular romance novels under a pseudonym, but, mired in a loveless marriage to an adulterous military man in Bosnia, she no longer has the desire to write her profitable melodramatic stories. When writer’s block strikes, she gets a job working as a literary critic for a newspaper, and she promptly trashes…

Surrealist adult animation without all the Disney treacle, The Triplets of Belleville is a unique and playful Parisian fairytale about a club-footed mother’s valiant mission – aided by her trusty dog and the titular trio – to rescue her kidnapped Tour de France-competing bicyclist son from square-bodied mobsters. Written and directed by Sylvain Chomet, the…

With 1991’s High Heels, Pedro Almodóvar hit a new career low, producing a florid riff on ‘40s and ‘50s women’s pictures that’s not funny, suspenseful, or original. The Byzantine plot – about a caddish man who’s two-timing TV news anchor Rebeca Del Paramo (Victoria Abril) with her pop star mother Becky (Marisa Paredes), as well…

Pedro Almodóvar’s controversial 1990 Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! was originally rated NC-17 before being released unrated, but, ironically, it was one of the director’s least risqué films to date. A black comedy about the (literal and figurative) bonds of love, it’s an off-kilter – and off-putting – mix of humor, sex, and Stockholm…