News

In “Windtalkers” Cage’s struggle with his guilt demons dominates the promising topics of a code that was never broken...

By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

When does a knighted actor collect a paycheck?

By John DeSando, WCBE’s “It’s Movie Time”

When does a knighted actor collect a paycheck?

When he acts benightedly in a cliched spy thriller that is a virtual textbook of Hollywood expectations, right down to the scruffy mid-eastern terrorists and the oversized red digital readout on a nuclear bomb.

When "Enigma" is real, it’s good intrigue...

By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

My favorite Michael-Apted directed work is "Thunderheart," the tragic tale about struggles between the FBI and Indians in the Dakotas in the 70's. His recent "Enigma" again treats history, this time the British breaking of the Nazi secret code in WWII at Bletchley, the busy estate of British decrypters.

The beauty shop of "Steel Magnolias" now looks like a warm, funny place to me and tiny Chickapenn Parish much more original than I originally thought...

By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

If you’re a daughter yet to figure out your crazy mother, then see "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood." You may realize you're not alone, and your mother may be saner than you thought.

Leave your disbelief at home and enter a fantasy world a little bit closer to reality than most of us would like...

By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

When I don't carp about the narrative logic or continuity of a film, it just may be I liked it well enough I was willing to suspend my disbelief. Enter the new Jack Ryan in another Tom Clancy adaptation, "The Sum of All Fears."

Let me carp first:

For "Happy Accidents," Time is just the beginning...

By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

In "Happy Accidents," Ruby (Marisa Tomei) falls in love with Sam (Vincent D'Onofrio), an alleged visitor from the year 2470. Ruby, in deep analysis, says, "I am willing to find a balance between my own needs and my concern for others." She's a bit of a flake and he's just plain out there.

You'll not pause or sleep in this satisfying thriller...

By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

Far from America and the easy resolutions of disaffected workers, "Time Out" is a respectful treatise on the wages of anomie and lies...

By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

In Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," Marlow says there is "a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies." The French film "Time Out" is about Vincent, who lies by claiming to be employed while he is not and carrying this lie to an extreme that endangers his family and friends.

"Hollywood Ending" may start out looking like Woody's going to crash and burn again, but stay with it because... well because you're going to love its Hollywood ending.

By Clay Lowe, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

Woody's back and sizzling in "Hollywood Ending." Though die-hard Woody fans may think I exaggerate, I think he's never been better. Relying more on sight-gags and slap-stick shticks than ever before, his quick-quips and sharp dialogue sparkles like an opening night on the Great White Way.

The Force is still with us...

By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

George Lucas has brought us back to the energy and imagination of the two original Star Wars adventures with his new "Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones." Although recently, especially with "Phantom Menace," he seemed to be merely creatively cloning, this installment has some of the wit and character development of those earlier episodes.

Move over Kenneth Brannagh, Clare Peploe and Bertolucci are after your corner on the market for European theatrical classics...

By Clay Lowe, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

"The Triumph of Love" is a fun-filled return to the French classics of the 18th century with Clare Peploe's cinematic revival of Marivaux's comedy of manners. Her famous film director husband, Bernardo Bertolucci, co-wrote the script.

Bringing radio into the classroom...

Below you'll find brief descriptions, sent in by teachers all over the country, of how they're using This American Life with their students.

McGuire and Dunst glory in their vulnerability and set out to prove superheroes (and their girlfriends) can fall in love, nail villains to the wall, and still be tough enough to cry.

By Clay Lowe, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

Hooray, Hooray it's the first of May and the summer's first blockbuster has already swooshed in to the local multiplexes!

Records that once shined so brightly in your collection are now blemishes to your coolness...

By Chris McQuoid, WCBE

"It's Movie Time" previews this summer's coming attractions...

By John DeSando & Clay Lowe, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

When WCBE's "It's Movie Time" film critics John DeSando and Clay Lowe were asked to do a feature on what they were looking forward to seeing at their favorite art houses and multiplexes this summer, here's what they suggested might be worth catching. As might be expected they have asked that they not be held responsible for their miscalculations.

BLOOD WORK
DeSando's Choice

Beware the full moon, Hives and White Stripes -- long live the Bloooooozze Exxploshhhun!

By Scott Vezdos, WCBE's "Saturday Evening Sounds"

Since Jon Spencer surfaced last with the genre busting, hip-hop infused Acme, the blooze is suddenly in vogue having been dusted off and painted with White Stripes. Now is the the perfect time for the master to reclaim his throne from the young upstarts who have stolen his thunder.

Erich Rohmer uses the latest in digital technology to tell the tale of a Scottish upper class lady who gets caught in Paris during the outbreak of the French Revolution...

By Clay Lowe, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

This film depicts "the whisper heard most often," a tale of murder not quite so foul as foolish...

By John DeSando, WCBE's

Nick Hornby and Badly Drawn Boy -- a match made in Restoration Hardware heaven...

By Scott Vezdos, WCBE's "Saturday Evening Sounds"

Andie MacDowell is "better than sausage"...

By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

If I told my buddies I was having an affair with a woman seriously younger than I, I don't think they would endanger the young woman or their own friendships just to derail my temporary insanity. Welcome to the film "Crush."

Bottom line. How much you enjoy this movie depends upon how you feel about Sandra Bullock...

By Clay Lowe, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

"Murder by Numbers" is a Sandra Bullock showcase that has all the window dressings of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller. A spooky abandoned house on the edge of a precipitous cliff. The Pacific Ocean boiling like a cauldron below. A law enforcement officer haunted by her past -- think Jimmy Stewart in "Vertigo," then digitize in Bullock.

The plot is so thin, I’m afraid to walk over it for fear of disappearing through its icy logic.

By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

No one makes trashy action flicks better than Hollywood. Don’t worry about challenging your brain on "The Scorpion King." First introduced in "The Mummy Returns," the King is again played by wrestling hero "The Rock." The plot is so thin, I’m afraid to walk over it for fear of disappearing through its icy logic.

Move over Alec, Billy, Stephen and Daniel -- there are some new Baldwin Brothers in town...

By Scott Vezdos, WCBE's "Saturday Evening Sounds"

With a combination of old-fashioned painted-cel animation, less-than-fluid motion, and modern digital technology based on a 1949 manga (comic book) by the late Osamu Tezuka, this animation is filled with ideas of love and identity, be it human or robot.

By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

The film deservedly won the top prize last year at the Cannes Film Festival...

By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

"The Son's Room" reminds me why I love character-driven European films: the pace is slow, the camera lingers on a face longer than an American shot would dare, and the theme is frighteningly simple but almost always universal. In this case, a loving family has lost a son; the grieving process and the letting go are painful and inevitable. The film makes it all as lyrical as could be possible for a grim topic.

"Delhi is a strange 'globalized' world where tradition butts heads with modernity at every turn"...

By John DeSando, WCBE's

"Panic Room" is a good "B" movie that makes you glad you don’t live in a mansion in the heart of NYC...

By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

"When they say 'No,' they're looking for a way to say 'Yes.'"...

By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

Why do fundamentalists and zealots sometimes resort to murder to carry out "the will of God"? ...

By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

These two actresses are superb at being bitchy and seductive to each other as well as their enemies...

By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"

Don't cross the characters played by Stockard Channing and Julia Stiles in "The Business of Strangers." If you do, you'll think the male revenge film "In the Company of Men" to be a modest complaint about the battle of the sexes. "Business" is a raw polemic about corporate women treated ill by men in and out of the boardroom.