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November 23, 2005
Rent
(out of four)
Jonathan Larson's Rent may not have had the answer for AIDS, but it certainly offered the cure for the common musical. Transposing La Bohème's death-by-typhoid tragedy to New York's equally bohemian East Village, Larson set his angst-driven opus to a contemporary rock score. Rent was a young person's musical, combining a liberal acceptance of drug addicts and deviants with the kind of new-fangled music that sent the blue-haired Broadway crowd reaching for earplugs.
Posted by Peter Debruge at 12:16 PM | Comments (0)
Just Friends
(out of four)
The past 10 years haven't changed much for high school hottie Jamie Palamino (Amy Smart), but they've been quite kind to her roly-poly best friend, Chris Brander (Ryan Reynolds). Once a sensitive, flabby shy guy, Chris has blossomed into a successful L.A. music producer and certified chick magnet.
If high school has taught Chris anything, it's that the moment you befriend the girl of your dreams, "it's game over.... You become a complete nonsexual entity in her eyes, like her brother, or a lamp."
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Posted by Peter Debruge at 12:04 PM | Comments (1)
Yours, Mine and Ours
(out of four)
The Brady Bunch had six, The Sound of Music's Von Trapp family had seven, The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio had 10 and Cheaper by the Dozen's Bakers had 12. But 18 kids? That's gotta be some kind of record.
And it would be, too, if there weren't already a perfectly delightful 1968 movie called Yours, Mine and Ours starring Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball as a widow-widower pair who combine their sizable families in unwieldy matrimony.
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Posted by Peter Debruge at 12:01 PM | Comments (0)
November 11, 2005
Pride & Prejudice feature
The opening chapters of Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice read uncannily like a screenplay. Ripe with colorful characters and composed almost entirely in dialogue, these early pages set the stage for one of the greatest romances in the English language, as if the popular Regency-era writer had a suspicion Hollywood might one day want to make a movie -- or six or seven -- of her most celebrated work.
After Shakespeare, Austen is perhaps the most frequently adapted writer in the English language, and though her favorite novel has indirectly inspired a number of loose spin-offs (including Bridget Jones's Diary and the Bollywood-themed Bride & Prejudice), it's been a full 65 years since the book was last translated faithfully to the big screen.
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Posted by Peter Debruge at 08:52 AM | Comments (0)
Zathura
(out of four)
As movie pitches go, it's hard to imagine anything shorter or sweeter than "Die Hard on a bus" (Speed) or "snakes on a plane" (next summer's Snakes on a Plane). Try this one on for size: "Jumanji in space."
Okay, okay, so you didn't love Jumanji, with its primitive CGI and overbearing (not to mention over-bearded) Robin Williams energy. Zathura is a whole different beast, a wild buckle-up-and-blast-off adventure that plunges every corner of kids' favorite subject.
Posted by Peter Debruge at 08:26 AM | Comments (0)
Derailed
(out of four)
How is it that movies have numbed us to the act of murder, and yet still allow us to feel outraged every time a rape occurs on screen? Derailed, which begins as a sunny meetcute between a bored family man (Clive Owen) and flirty ex-Friend (Jennifer Aniston), chugs along innocently enough before a very graphic rape scene interrupts the story and forces it to do as the title suggests.
Posted by Peter Debruge at 07:50 AM | Comments (4)
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
(out of four)
"The words 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,' which I saw on an Italian movie poster, are perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies. This appeal is what attracts us, and ultimately what makes us despair when we begin to understand how seldom movies are more than this." – film critic Pauline Kael, 1968
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Posted by Peter Debruge at 07:45 AM | Comments (0)
November 09, 2005
Get Rich or Die Tryin'
(out of four)
Nine bullets, one to the face. That's one hell of a wake-up call.
Curtis ''50 Cent'' Jackson began his career as a drug dealer, then switched to rapping after a near-fatal shooting left him bleeding in the street. As life stories go, 50 Cent's experience is staggering. If he were telling you his story over coffee, you'd no doubt be astounded, but onscreen, movies begin like this all the time. The hero goes down in a blaze of glory with only his narration to assure us that he isn't dead, then things rewind back to reveal how he found himself in such a tight spot in the first place.
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Posted by Peter Debruge at 07:55 AM | Comments (0)
November 04, 2005
Chicken Little
(out of four)
Disney has a long tradition of mucking about with classic children's stories, from giving Snow White's companions seven dopey names to transforming all fairy-tale forest creatures into singing, dancing ninnies. Now, Disney's gone and committed its most flagrant literary violation yet: a twist on Chicken Little in which it turns out that not only is the sky falling, but there are angry aliens invading, too.
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Posted by Peter Debruge at 12:56 PM | Comments (0)