United 93

Where does one begin to comment on a film like this without injecting one’s self and one’s ego into the words being written? That is, after all, the style of “United 93.” There’s no trace of artifice, intention, agenda, style, or plot in the film. The tension that builds relies heavily on what we already know, so there’s no manufactured twist needed here. Our anxieties are…

Akeelah and the Bee

Akeelah Henderson (Keke Palmer) seems like a typical girl on the surface. She talks about boys with her friend, Georgia (Sahara Garey), at Crenshaw Middle School. But underneath her loquaciousness lies an insecure prodigy. She hides her perfect test scores from her peers, fearing ostracism for her intelligence. Her oldest brother is in the military, and…

Hard Candy

Just before this movie started, my wife and I were having a conversation about, incidentally, the misogynistic violence in certain films of late, such as “Wolf Creek.” But just what is the biggest con in David Slade’s “Hard Candy?” It could be…

Stick It

You know it. You’ve seen it. It’s the “rebel gets community service as penance for her crimes” plot. The punishment? She has to serve her time in the Vickerman Gymnastics Academy. However, while Haley Graham (Missy Peregrym) is rather analogous to Emilio Estevez’ character in “The Mighty Ducks” (from Disney, which is part of Buena Vista Pictures, the distributor of this movie), the film attempts…

Silent Hill

One of the most disturbing trends in film over the past 15 years is the sheer abundance of cinematic bilge that has been churned out to cash in on a popular video game. Take for instance House of the Dead, Resident Evil, and Alone in the Dark. These steaming piles of celluloid are from the past few years alone. Such films set the bar so…

American Dreamz

“You make me feel like a better person, and I’m… not a better person,” says Martin Tweed (Hugh Grant) to his girlfriend as she announces she’s leaving him. Indifference is a word that requires more effort to type than the emotion that typifies Tweed’s attitude toward her. He’s of course a caricature of Simon Cowell, the garrulous talent judge of the ubiquitous…

The Sentinel

Directed by Clark Johnson (“S.W.A.T.”,”Iron Eagle II”) and written by George Nolfi (“Oceans Twelve”), “The Sentinel” is not a thriller, it’s not a drama, it’s not even a decent crime story. It’s a “star” movie. Note that 50 percent of the theatrical poster’s visual space is occupied by the names of the four main cast members, including Michael Douglas who was an actor once upon a time. The movie begins in the fashion of about…

Scary Movie 4

This is, in a way, a difficult movie to analyze. First, because it’s a conglomeration of only bits and pieces of other movies, and not an entire story in its own right—possessing only slightly more continuity from scene to scene over its predecessors. Second, how do you know when the melodramatic acting and decidedly silly dialogue is actually bad…

Brick

“Brick” has every reason to be pretentious. I didn’t realize this going in, and for the first fifteen minutes I felt like I was watching a bad film school rehash of Godard in the most contrived manner. But somewhere along the way, this flagrantly self-affected and at times dementedly jocular piece of art-house trash earned my…

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