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Knights of the Bland Table
Take out all the magic and romance from the King Arthur legend, and what do you get? The lame new Jerry Bruckheimer-produced King Arthur. My Slant magazine review slices and dices this medieval misstep…
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Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) Perhaps the most blistering cinematic attack ever directed at an incumbent president, Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 lays into George W. Bush with a fierceness that the director’s ardent fans will surely relish. For its furious two hours, the film – being released by Harvey Weinstein’s Fellowship Adventure Group after…
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Two Losers, Two Keepers
I’ve been busy reviewing in this, my last weekend in NYC before making the move out to Stamford, CT next week. For filmcritic.com, I’ve got a positive review of Russian Ark director Aleksandr Sokurov’s new film Father and Son, as well as a brutal critique of next month’s The Door in the Floor, a repulsive…
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Wife-to-Order
What can one say about a pointless remake that no one is interested in and has already been beset by horrible advance buzz? I do my best with Frank Oz’s new The Stepford Wives over at Slant magazine.
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Sunset Romance
Most Hollywood romances seem like they were made by evil Hallmark elves (who do exist, by the way), which is why it’s nice to find that Richard Linklater’s Before Sunset – the follow-up to his 1995 sleeper Before Sunrise – is as stunning as its predecessor. My rapturous review is over at Slant magazine.
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Pitch Blah
Pitch Black was a respectable sci-fi thriller, but its sequel – this Friday’s The Chronicles of Riddick, starring the Lou Ferrigno-esque Vin Diesel as a badass anti-hero who can see in the dark – is overstuffed sci-fi pretentiousness at its worst. My Slant magazine review turns the lights out on this dud…
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Welcome Home (Sanitarium)
A behind-the-scenes record of Metallica’s tumultuous three-year quest to make St. Anger while trying not to kill themselves (and each other) in the process, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s Metallica: Some Kind of Monster is one hell of a documentary. My filmcritic.com review thrashs out the good news…
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Some Booze and Some Soul
Two new Slant magazine reviews for this beautiful (at least here in NYC) Memorial Day weekend. The first is for a well-done documentary on the life and work of underground poet Charles Bukowski entitled Bukowski: Born Into This, and the second is for the dreadfully stupid Soul Plane. Have a happy holiday!
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Apocalyptic Accu-Weather
Environmental paranoia reaches new heights with Roland Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow, a silly disaster flick in which our greenhouse gas-ignoring recklessness leads to a new Ice Age. My cooler head prevails at Slant magazine…
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Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (1968): B
Atheism is no match for Catholicism in Dracula Has Risen From the Grave, the third installment of Hammer studio’s crimson-smeared vampire saga starring Christopher Lee as the lascivious hemoglobin-guzzling Count Dracula. Twelve months after the events of the last film, a priest finds a woman with bite marks hanging dead inside his church bell, a…
