Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited gets adapted. Again.
Annie Wagner
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Darwin = Hitler
Expelled‘s Intellectual Bankruptcy by Annie Wagner
The most bizarre thing about the new intelligent design propaganda film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed isn’t that former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein is being paid to extol a pseudoscience whose hypotheses can’t be tested (everyone has a price), nor is it that the film compares science with Nazism and Stalinism (though it does, repeatedly and […]
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Step Off!
How She Move: Naughty Competitive Dancing!
Step was originally developed by, and is still strongly associated with, black fraternities and sororities—so at first it’s a little weird to see the dance form used as a signifier for the authenticity of the projects. Raya (Rutina Wesley) attends the fancy Seaton Academy, and wants to go to medical school, but when her junkie […]
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Pleasure and Dread
Now with 100 Percent Less Pretension
The first hour of Atonement, set in a pre-war English country house, is faultless: a pungent stew of pleasure and dread, shrill suspicions and pouting revenge. Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan), a pale-haired child looking almost spectral in her shapeless white dress, has written a play called The Trials of Arabella. She’s preparing for the evening’s […]
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Sleeping in Class
The Good Shepherd‘s Dull History Lesson
In The Good Shepherd, a tense Yalie named Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) is tapped to join Skull and Bones on the basis of his WASP bona fides. (The secret society politely overlooks his father’s disreputable death.) He’s uptight and pale and has a penchant for poetry, so you’d think the sexually charged initiation would send […]
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Soft-Boiled
A Neo-Noir That Doesn’t Quite Perform
As we move into fall, when Hollywood rolls out a parade of shameless Academy bait, the fixers are attempting to position Hollywoodland as a hard-boiled noir throwback. Like the movies it’s clearly trying to emulate, Hollywoodland presents a revisionist take on a footnote of Golden State history: Was George Reeves, erstwhile Superman, truly a suicide? […]
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He’s Getting Warmer
An Interview with Al Gore
Pundits have hypothesized that Al Gore is feeling out a third presidential run with this new global-warming documentary, and it’s true that the attendant rush of publicity wouldn’t be such a bad way to launch a campaign. An Inconvenient Truth allows Gore to fire up his liberal base on unimpeachable grounds (namely, the federal government’s […]
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Potently Flawed
Waging The War Within
The War Within dir. Castelo Opens Fri Oct 21 Cinema 21 The first movie since 9/11 to deal explicitly with the subject of Islamic terrorism on American soil, The War Within is a potent thriller, an imperfect analysis of the motivations behind terrorist activity, and an intriguing, but overwritten family drama. It alternates curiously between […]
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Coal Rider
Charlize Theron Almost Cries in North Country
North Country dir. Caro Opens Fri Oct 21 Various Theaters The new film from populist Whale Rider director Niki Caro, North Country trades in the previous movie’s mild exoticism, substituting snowbound Minnesota miners for indigenous New Zealanders. It prides itself on the same brand of irrefutable anti-sexist arguments. (In the former, girls can be leaders, […]
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Seasonal Affect
Korean Film Spans Life
Spring, Summer, Fall, WinterÉ and Spring dir. Ki-duk Opens Fri May 14 Fox Tower Each segment of this unusual Korean film corresponds to one of the seasons in the title, and each season, in turn, describes one phase in the life of the main character. At the outset, the character is a child monk, and […]
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Big Fat Drag Queens
Vardalos Shrewd Under Cover
Connie and Carla dir. Lembeck Opens Fri April 16 Various Theaters It’s been a couple of years since the mind-boggling box-office success of writer-star Nia Vardalos’ My Big Fat Greek Wedding, so the reception of her new effort, Connie and Carla, will be taken as evidence that she is either tapped into the throbbing aorta […]