“I feel as if we failed to get the message across,” ponders Al Gore while narrating at the introduction of this documentary. He’s referring partly to the public disregard and slide in government policy toward the ecology and environment over the past 30-40 years during his tenure in Congress and as Vice President. Instead of browbeating and “I told you so’s,” Gore tries to approach the present situation by re-evaluating himself, his…
I wanted to start this review by writing about Robert Altman and the provocative films he has made throughout several decades, but as I’m no advocate of so-called Auteur Theory, I will not discuss “A Prairie Home Companion” in context of his body of work. Instead, I will only say that it is an exception and not necessarily in a good way. I thought I might appreciate this film more because I live in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metro Area, from…
Never did I understand the appeal of stock car racing. Cars of relatively moderate speed (considerably slower than Formula One) go around on a circuitous path for seemingly endless scores of laps. I tried doing a search on the internet for NASCAR rules, to understand more about the race but invariably it turned up dozens of articles about crashes. Wait… now I get it, sort of. People…
Deepa Mehta was born in Amritsar, India, in 1950. She emigrated to Canada in 1973,…
As a movie intended to be a comedy about ethnic idiosyncrasies and, to a lesser extent, religious beliefs, “Steins” presents us with limited shades of Jews—e.g. the ridiculously-wealthy Steins throwing a “Titanic” themed party complete with stage show on the aforementioned ocean liner for their son’s Bar Mitzvah, but Grandpa Irwin (Garry Marshall) can barely afford the shirt on his back. Is there no middle ground to being a Jew? Surely, just as…
Rarely does a title tell you everything you really need to know about a movie, but, truly, could you put up with any more spandex and bad one-liners after this? I, for one, doubt it. In this particular installment (I dare not suggest it’s the last… is that ever the case?), the progressively-minded students of Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and the anarchistic devotees of Magneto (Ian McKellen) are yet…
Generally, I find animated films revolving around some sort of needlessly complicated journey—inevitably proving to be entirely avoidable by the end of the film—tiresome and even grating. But, this time, something interesting happened on the way to the candy store. Does “Over the Hedge” disprove my theory? Probably not… especially since it’s not…
A sandstorm of media insanity has preceded this movie like an army of Oprah devotees marching into the streets to beat you in the head until you buy the self-professed prophet’s most treasured book of the month, week, hour or minute… I have not read the book, but I will make no comparisons to it in my evaluation of the movie. On its own merits…