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August 28, 2006
Six Moral Tales
Eric Rohmer's films are a subtitle-lover's dream. While Cahiers du Cinema colleagues Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut searched for ways to strip their films of all unnecessary dialogue, Rohmer did just the opposite, embracing conversation and narration as a window into the interior lives of his characters. In "Six Moral Tales," Rohmer's first and best known cycle of films, the helmer invites auds to judge a man's character according to how his actions measure against his words. Happily, Criterion has provided plenty of material to help auds develop a thorough appreciation of Rohmer's illuminating sextet.
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Posted by Peter Debruge at 04:37 PM | Comments (0)
August 25, 2006
Quinceañera
(out of four)
Keen-say-an-yer-ah. Even if you can't say it, you should see this indispensable picture of modern-day Los Angeles told through the eyes of a young Latina on the cusp of her fifteenth birthday. Quinceañera is an unexpected self-portrait from a town that loves to tell stories about itself, often to the exclusion of the countless equally deserving dramas unfolding just a few blocks away. Here, instead of yet another movie about movies, we get an observant little kitchen sink story about the cost of gentrification a mere stone's throw from Hollywood.
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Posted by Peter Debruge at 10:05 AM | Comments (0)
Beerfest
(out of four)
Know your limits. That warning applies just as aptly to alcohol binges as it does to the comedy stylings of the Broken Lizard troupe, who shamelessly overextend the reaches of their talent in their latest low-concept romp, Beerfest.
The movie, as the name implies, is a frat boy's fantasy, the story of two brothers who travel to Germany to unload their father's ashes and accidentally stumble upon a super-secret competition to determine the world's most dedicated beer drinkers. It's Elizabethtown meets Animal House (no emo boys, lots of topless chicks), an irreverent Dodgeball-style sports sendup from the Super Troopers crew.
Posted by Peter Debruge at 09:55 AM | Comments (0)
How to Eat Fried Worms
(out of four)
Billy Forrester has 24 hours to eat 10 worms — or else.
Poor kid has it rough. No sooner does weak-stomached Billy (Luke Benward) move to a new city than school bully Joe Guire (Adam Hicks) singles him out as fresh meat to pick on. The first day of school, Joe steals Billy's lunchbox and stuffs earthworms in his Thermos. Then, the entire school chimes in, taunting Billy with the nickname ''Worm Boy'' and pelting him with gummy worms in the halls.
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Posted by Peter Debruge at 09:45 AM | Comments (0)
August 18, 2006
Accepted
(out of four)
When applying for college, no one wants the skinny envelope, the one that contains a single sheet of paper with the words, "We regret to inform you..." You want the fat package, stuffed with a letter that begins, "Congratulations," and lots of colorful pictures of your bright college future.
Bartleby Gaines (Justin Long) doesn't have a bright college future. He got the skinny letter — eight of them to be exact. Rejected from every university he applied to, Bartleby hatches a plan: Why not invent his own school, accept himself and spend his dad's tuition money however he wants? Ferris Bueller took a day off; Bartleby Gaines is about to coast through his next four years!
Posted by Peter Debruge at 11:14 AM | Comments (0)
Another Gay Movie
NO STARS (out of four)
As anyone who spends enough time tuned to cable's Logo network can tell you, there are four kinds of "gay movies" — the coming-out story, the in-love-with-my-straight-roommate story, the gay-bashing story and the dying-of-AIDS story. Ninety percent of gay-targeted independent films fall into one of these four categories (even Brokeback Mountain conforms to the gay-bashing formula) — but not Another Gay Movie.
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Posted by Peter Debruge at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)
August 11, 2006
Once in a Lifetime
(out of four)
A typical World Cup soccer match averages fewer than three goals a game. That's one reason Americans never really embraced the sport, suggests Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos. Americans just don't have the patience to sit still for 90 minutes and watch the action unfold.
Maybe that's why the documentary, which recounts the big-bang creation and subsequent implosion of the all-star soccer team that introduced the United States to the sport, treats its audience like a bunch of attention deficit disorder cases. Directors Paul Crowder and John Dower's hyperactive assembly plays like a greatest hits of spectacular soccer goals, piling dozens of phenomenal scores into the span of a normal match.
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Posted by Peter Debruge at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)
August 04, 2006
The Descent
(out of four)
Caves are scary. Not only are they pitch-black and craggy and filled with creepy-crawlers, they seem to go endlessly ... down. If heaven is all pearly gates and pillowy clouds, as any good Sunday school student can tell you, then hell is a cave. And the deeper you go, the worse it gets. Just ask Dante.
The Descent, as the name implies, is about one such journey deep into the bowels of hell, complete with demons who, while not invincible, certainly seem plausible. The whole setup — feral subhuman foes and all — is enough to make Deliverance fans squeal in terror. Better still, The Descent manages to be every bit as intense before the monsters show up as it is once the feeding frenzy begins. Imagine, a horror film in which you actually care about the characters -- even when they are half a dozen dead-meat female hotties who might just as easily have found work posing for the first six months of a swimsuit calendar.
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Posted by Peter Debruge at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)
The Night Listener
(out of four)
The Night Listener begins where The Break-Up leaves off — with a broken relationship and the distant promise of reconciliation — only this time, the couple in question aren't Hollywood's most photogenic young stars. In fact, they're both men (Robin Williams and Bobby Cannavale) struggling to move on after the collapse of their 10-year relationship.
The hook — and it's a good one — is that Williams' character, radio host Gabriel Noone, takes under his wing a traumatized young writer named Pete, whose shocking memoir helps Noone shift focus away from his own depression. But as Noone gets increasingly invested in the kid's life, his ex-lover begins to suspect a hoax: Does the mysterious Pete, with whom Noone communicates only by phone and mail, really exist? And if so, why does his voice sound so much like that of his guardian, Donna (Toni Collette)?
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Posted by Peter Debruge at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)
Barnyard
(out of four)
Just about anyone can make an animated movie these days. Case in point: Barnyard, the loud, sophomoric and stunningly crude (both in visual quality and content) new computer-generated cartoon from writer/director Steve Oedekerk, mastermind behind Patch Adams and the Ace Ventura sequel.
Animators everywhere should take Barnyard as a call to action. If Oedekerk can do it, so can they, and while there's no guarantee they could do it better, they'd be hard-pressed to fare much worse. Not all of Oedekerk's credits are as insufferable as those collaborations with Tom Shadyac. He also co-wrote Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius with director John A. Davis, who demonstrated a week ago that you don't need Pixar-caliber visuals to tell a good animated story in The Ant Bully. Cutting-edge CGI never hurts, but a little creativity goes a long way.
Posted by Peter Debruge at 10:33 AM | Comments (0)