Arts + Life

The sequence about the surreal science fiction film, where a miniaturized man enters his love's vagina, is as shocking and funny a sequence as you will see,...

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

Why won't this film make it big if I like it so much?

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

This film is not quite the success that brilliantly terse novel promised,...

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

Graham Greene understood the American penchant for taking the Marshal Plan to its limits. Even in the '50's he knew in his novel "The Quiet American" that the American presence in Indochina, where the French were losing control, would be powerful and doomed.

Reggio continues to delight me with his eclectic accumulation of spectacular photography, real and digital, and his integration of Philip Glass's Eastern music.

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

It's been a while since I laughed so many times in a movie, so, audience, leave your film-criticism minds at home, and travel to merry old England to have a jolly time with two loveable rogues.

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

...this film is my vote for best of whatever year it wants. It's good, I mean, it's very good.

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

I vote we award Oscars to the three female leads of "The Hours" and move on to the next year's balloting. Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer of the same name, David Hare's adaptation, and Stephen Daldry's direction bring enough pedigree to the project, but these performances are the equal of those masters.

Except for "Charlotte Gray," I haven't recently seen a better depiction of the fatally flawed resistance against Germans than in this film.

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

See this film to experience passionate cinema at its best.

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

If you've ever written for publication or tried, Spike Jonze's "Adaptation" is the best film I've seen since "Barton Fink" to depict writer's block. The joy of the creation is a Darwinian journey from the writer's primal self through the swamp of emotions and yearnings to the expulsion of his worse self and the birth of his voice. Barton Fink went through a literal hell to get it as well.

"25th Hour" is a version of "Friends" as "Friends" could hardly understand.

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

"25th Hour" is a version of "Friends" as "Friends" could hardly understand. Although Edward Norton's life alters forever when he enters prison tomorrow for drug possession, today he says goodbye to family and friends, assesses their value to his life, and asks one friend a favor to beat all favors.

...how did the Golden Globes ever nominate this as a comedy?

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

If Dickens were with us today, he would delight in the stock shenanigans of Michael Milken and the outrageous dysfunction of the Osbourne family. Speculation and family chaos rule his "Nicholas Nickleby," directed on film by Douglas McGrath ("Emma") and starring Christopher Plummer as cold Uncle Ralph and Jim Broadbent as cruel Wackford Squeers.

Nicholson's Schmidt is the most memorable and least glamorous protagonist this year in film.

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

"About Schmidt," starring Jack Nicholson, is a credible reflection on middle class retirement and self-awareness. I am moved by the static images of this retired insurance man, staring off into the unknown, comprehending little of what life means and failing miserably to deal with the recent loss of his wife of 42 years.

"In this town, murder's a form of entertainment."

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

"They do things they never did on Broadway." Sinatra's love song to Chicago is not needed for the film "Chicago," a successful adaptation of a Broadway show recently revived but premiering over a quarter century ago. The town is gloriously painted in song and dance, imitating the legendary Bob Fosse's style and energy, and recalling the roaring times when gangsters and larcenous ladies ruled the tabloids.

Director Philip Noyce captures the challenge of fighting the establishment and the Outback, but he doesn't seem to know how to make the journey interesting story telling-not much happens as the children cunningly avoid the law.

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

"Catch Me If You Can" reaches back into Spielberg's lyrical relationship with childhood by showing a dysfunctional family turned right by some very wrong moves,...

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

Leo DiCaprio will win no awards as the vengeful Irish orphan, Amsterdam, but he comports himself well enough to be taken seriously as an actor.

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

"Antwone Fisher" is not a slice of black life -it is a sentimental journey, ...

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

If I see a film directed by a renowned black actor and autobiographically written by a gifted black man, then I hope for a film rich in black culture. "Antwone Fisher" is not a slice of black life - it is a sentimental journey, directed by a sentimentalist and written by a man for whom everything turned out just right, every tear jerked out with impeccable timing.

..."Nemesis" turns on the idea that mankind must continue to look to the stars to carry on its mission of hope and love.

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

The titular bad guy of "Star Trek: Nemesis," a DNA copy of Captain Jean Luc Picard called Shinzon, wants to destroy humanity through Picard. This franchise has long mined the alter-ego, alternate-universe motifs to create havoc with its steely captains, so this one is no different.

This is music and learning woven through some of the most exciting pop music in the 60's and 70's. You don't believe me?

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

As I stood a while ago in Windsor looking across the water at Detroit's hollow Renaissance Center, I thought, "A renaissance about what?" I just didn't know that Eminem would soon help reshape music out of a bleak 8 mile slum, and I had forgotten Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, James Jamerson, and Ivy Joe Hunter would be but a few musicians who had renewed that city in the name of Motown.

Forget the Freud-this Potter is better than the first and first-rate fantasy.

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

When Prof. Dumbledore tells Harry Potter it's not ability that counts but the choices we make, I knew this series had to be more than magical cliffhangers strung together by 3 cute British private school chums. Then magically appeared other themes to me: the importance of loyalty and family, the wages of evil, disdain of class and hierarchies, and respect for worthy elders, among others.

Both filmmakers capture the desperation of good people on the edge of poverty who find love.

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

Mike Leigh has commented that his "All or Nothing" and other working class films are not documentary style although they aspire to the milieu of the documentary. He claims to heighten the reality of his characters by isolating them, for instance in their tenement where only the central characters seem to live. Leigh tries not to distract with other realities such as drug dealing or theft.