Arts + Life

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12:58pm

Fri December 19, 2003
Movie Reviews

In America

"In America" may be the best immigrant movie ever made in the English language.

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9:01am

Wed December 17, 2003
Movie Reviews

Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

The director has succeeded in returning our Western culture, especially America, to myths and legends of camaraderie.

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10:51am

Sat December 13, 2003
Movie Reviews

Something's Gotta Give

A romantic comedy American cinema can be proud of.

In "Something's Gotta Give," Jack Nicholson plays a wealthy music magnate capably aided by National Board of Review winner Diane Keaton as a mid-fifty year old playwright with a young daughter dating Jack.

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2:20pm

Fri December 12, 2003
Movie Reviews

Stuck on You

There's something about this "Stuck on You" that sticks to me.

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2:12pm

Mon December 8, 2003
Movie Reviews

Savannah Film Festival 2003

An interview with director Arthur Penn on "Mickey One"

On October 28, 2003 Arthur Penn was presented the Savannah Film Festival's "Achievement in Cinema Award" by the Savannah College of Art and Design, the festival's host. Following the awards ceremony there was a retrospective screening of Penn's more well known "Bonnie and Clyde."

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4:33pm

Fri December 5, 2003
Movie Reviews

The Last Samurai

You do not have a credible performance by Tom Cruise in the titular role.

"The Last Samurai" is formulaic epic: exotic location, historical shift in culture (Japan on the brink of modernism), a singular hero tested to the max, and warfare on a grand scale. Add grand cinematography with over 21/2 hours of screen time, and you have a Hollywood epic.

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4:57pm

Thu December 4, 2003
Movie Reviews

The Last Samurai

You do not have a credible performance by Tom Cruise in the titular role.

"The Last Samurai" is formulaic epic: exotic location, historical shift in culture (Japan on the brink of modernism), a singular hero tested to the max, and warfare on a grand scale. Add grand cinematography with over 21/2 hours of screen time, and you have a Hollywood epic.

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4:46pm

Thu December 4, 2003
Movie Reviews

Timeline: A Fun Time Frolic


Connolly is a joy on-screen...but even he has a few awkward moments on screen. He easily gets the award for Most Artificial Acting in a Napping Scene.

You won't see any Oscar-winning performances in Timeline, the latest flick based on a Michael Crichton sci-fi novel. Yet, despite some awkward acting and Crichton's trademark forced-plot motion, it's a fun movie that's well worth the time spent in line with the holiday cinema crowd.

First, the basics:

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1:44pm

Wed December 3, 2003
Movie Reviews

Sylvia

Those who long to be in touch with poetic icons of the last century will welcome whatever bits of insight it gives.

"Sylvia" is an engaging biopic of poet Sylvia Plath's emotional juggernaut marriage to poet Ted Hughes. It reminds me of artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera in the also emotionally rich "Frida." But in neither case do we ever get an understanding of how the artists actually construct their art from their minds and their lives. Perhaps that exploration can never be done in film.

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3:44pm

Thu November 27, 2003
Movie Reviews

The Missing

Blanchette carves out a memorable stand-alone heroine.

"The Missing" is as close to a feminist movie as can be telling a story that engrosses on the traditional level of the Western without offending warring cultural factions. Cate Blanchette plays a frontier single mom and local healer, whose teenage daughter is abducted by Apaches and army deserters to sell for prostitution in Mexico.

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1:55pm

Wed November 26, 2003
Movie Reviews

Bad Santa

"Bad Santa" is the baddest satire of the Christmas spirit you will ever see.

"Bad Santa" is the baddest satire of the Christmas spirit you will ever see. In contrast, visit "Love Actually" for a standard and amiable tribute to the spirit of love we all cling to at that season. "Santa" stars Billy Bob Thornton as a dissolute, drunken, foul-mouthed, cynical thief who gains entrance to store safes by playing Santa with his little-person cohort played by Tony Cox.

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10:14am

Wed November 26, 2003
Movie Reviews

The Singing Detective

It's an offbeat film with style.

The 1984 "Singing Detective" miniseries had Michael Gambon as a misanthropic novelist confusing himself with his pulp-fiction noir detective. Although no one could approach Gambon's startling portrayal, no actor I see can match Robert Downey Jr.'s ability to bring back this character with his own demons to recreate hallucinations and '50's musicals in dreams lurid, colorful, and downright Freudian.

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11:14am

Wed November 19, 2003
Movie Reviews

The Human Stain

This almost too-serious drama works on several levels, maybe one or two too many.

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3:29pm

Sun November 16, 2003
Movie Reviews

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

It has literary elements but is also a good sea yarn without them.

Peter Weir has a penchant for the weird: "A Picnic at Hanging Rock" drips with symbolism and sex and remains my favorite Australian film of the '70's; "Truman Story" leans heavily on allegory about media control. His new "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," starring Russell Crowe, has literary elements but is also a good sea yarn without them.

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3:45pm

Tue November 11, 2003
Movie Reviews

The Matrix: Revolutionary No More

Revolutions could work...if you went into an editing room, and fused all three Matrix films together into one big eight-hour megamovie.

The Matrix: Revolutions is hardly revolutionary. It's merely the latest installment in a trilogy of movies that started off innovative and electrifying, but ended up repetitive and fizzling with static discharge.

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12:47pm

Tue November 11, 2003
Movie Reviews

Bubba Ho-tep

I vote "Bubba Ho-tep" the most imaginatively accessible film of 2003.

I vote "Bubba Ho-tep" the most imaginatively accessible film of 2003. Elvis living in a nursing home with JFK, transformed into an elderly black rebel, is the embodiment of cultural detritus, a king in exile stripped of his fame and fortune. These 2 icons of the 20th century battle an Egyptian soul-sucking mummy literally for the souls of humanity.

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3:02pm

Mon November 10, 2003
Movie Reviews

Love Actually

Hugh Grant's prime minister proves to the world that "love is all around."

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12:00pm

Mon November 10, 2003
Movie Reviews

Sylvia

Those who long to be in touch with poetic icons of the last century will welcome whatever bits of insight it gives.

"Sylvia" is an engaging biopic of poet Sylvia Plath's emotional juggernaut marriage to poet Ted Hughes. It reminds me of artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera in the also emotionally rich "Frida." But in neither case do we ever get an understanding of how the artists actually construct their art from their minds and their lives. Perhaps that exploration can never be done in film.

Read more

9:44am

Wed November 5, 2003
Movie Reviews

Matrix Revolutions

Audiences should leave feeling betrayed by a crass indulgence in video-game vulgarity.

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12:15pm

Mon October 27, 2003
Movie Reviews

Station Agent

The film has nothing but characters, and that is all it needs.

Peter Dinklage will lose an Oscar to Bill Murray or Sean Penn this year, but his role as introverted dwarf Finbar McBride addicted to trains is going to be a winner in my heart just as the film was at Sundance. Tom McCarthy's "Station Agent" is a career-defining role for Dinklage.

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