(Originally posted on 11/28/03) Like his stunning debut feature Amores Perros, director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 21 Grams concerns a group of strangers from differing socio-economic backgrounds brought together by tragedy. Shot with grainy, washed-out splendor by cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, the film is a solemn case study of sorrow, tracing the fateful events that ensnare a…

Alec Guinness had a deadpan English wit that brightened up many ‘50s Ealing Studios comedies, and his charm is on full display in Alexander Mackendrick’s The Ladykillers. Guinness, partially hidden beneath a garish wig and monstrous fake teeth, is Professor Marcus, a courteous crook who robs an armored truck with a gang of goofy British…

“Logic’s overrated,” says Halle Berry’s frazzled Dr. Miranda Grey at the conclusion of Gothika. Apparently, director Mathieu Kassovitz (La Haine) wholeheartedly agrees, since his ghost story/murder mystery succeeds in making every plot twist more unbelievable and irrational than the last. Grey is a psychiatrist at a mental ward, but after a rainy night encounter with…

Fortunately, it’s eight days before April 1st, meaning I’ve narrowly avoided having to write a faux-positive review of 1985’s April Fool’s Day. So on to the critical butchery! A girl named (I kid you not) Muffy St. John (Deborah Foreman) invites a group of her friends to spend vacation at her family’s remote island mansion.…

Thank God – or do I mean the horned guy down below? – for Reverend Kane (Julian Beck), the wrinkled spectre in the wide-brimmed hat and black-and-white suit who haunts the Freeling clan by singing “God Is In His Holy Temple” throughout Poltergeist II: The Other Side. Without him, the movie might self-implode (like the…

As far as unnecessary remakes go, Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead nicely amplifies George A. Romero’s 1978 zombies-at-the-mall horror classic with a barrage of suspenseful action, some markedly quicker creatures, and a droll sense of humor. Like the original, a group of seven strangers band together at a local shopping mall (appropriately named “The…

As with all John Waters films, Cry-Baby – a goofy homage to ‘50s melodramas and musicals crafted in the Grease template – lavishes affection on freaky and misunderstood teenagers living on the outskirts of mainstream American society. In 1952, rockabilly greaser Cry-Baby (Johnny Depp, gently poking fun at his own 21 Jump Street teen idol…

Lars von Trier has made a habit of depicting women suffer. In Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark, virtuous women endure unjust indignities at the hands of heartless townsfolk eager to project their own bigotry and insecurities upon their beatific female compatriots. Yet von Trier’s is not a misogynistic agenda. The women, too…