08/20/2008

Movie Review: ‘The Rocker’ is offbeat, upbeat, well … full of beat
At one point late in the offbeat comedy The Rocker, drummer Robert Fishman declares, “It is never too late to rock!”

08/19/2008

Movie review: Take advantage of another opportunity to view the inspirational ‘Road Home’
There were so many films in this year’s Rhode Island International Film Festival — 289 to be exact — that only a few got a chance to be reviewed in these pages. Most played for one screening and, unless they were among the lucky few to be picked up for national theatrical or TV distribution, won’t be seen in these parts again.

08/16/2008

Mirrors reflects poorly on Sutherland
Kiefer, dog, what happened to you, man? You used to be cool. We expected you to take over as your generation’s movie tough guy.

08/15/2008

Outer space mayhem
Star Wars mastermind George Lucas clearly isn’t planning to be done with his cash-cow series any time soon. You may have thought at the end of Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith, in 2005, that the epic series had come to a close, what with Anakin Skywalker going over to the Dark Side as Darth Vader.

Movie Review: Sparks fly in Woody Allen’s ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’
Vicky Cristina Barcelona continues Woody Allen’s recent cinematic tour of Europe with another morality play, one that doesn’t fit his “romantic comedy” or “melodramatic thriller” mold. But Barcelona is likable, beautifully acted, scenic and sexy, ingredients that have been missing from his films since, oh, Everyone Says I Love You (1996).

Bottle Shock is light in flavor, with comedic overtones
The first thing you should know about the oddly titled Bottle Shock is that it’s about fathers and sons, the destruction of preconceived notions, and wine … lots and lots of wine.

Movie Review: ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ doesn’t quite lift off
Every movie studio out there wants a piece of that Pixar-DreamWorks computer-animation pie. Even start-ups like Summit Entertainment covet some of the millions that parents fork over to send their little darlings to this week’s child-safe/family friendly cartoon.

Movie review: ‘Henry Poole’ drowns in sap
Glumness specialist Luke Wilson plays the title sad sack in Henry Poole Is Here.

08/13/2008

Movie Review: ‘Tropic Thunder’ a roaring laugh
The freewheeling comedy Tropic Thunder, about a crew making a war movie in Vietnam and unwittingly getting caught up in a real life-or-death adventure, starts off like a house afire.

08/09/2008

Clever, funny films in 48 hours
Nearly 600 amateur filmmakers spent 48 hours on the weekend of July 18 to 20 all over the state making 52 short films as part of the third annual 48 Hour Film Project.

08/08/2008

R.I. International Film Festival: ‘Satellites and Meteorites’ goes ’round and ’round
In writer-director Rick Larkin’s offbeat romantic fantasy Satellites and Meteorites a man and woman lie in comas in an Irish hospital, linked only by an auto accident yet drawn together in their dreams to each other.

Crazy as ever, Winters hasn’t lost it in ‘Certifiably Jonathan’
Wacky comedian Jonathan Winters, who kept America in stitches for more than a generation from the 1950s to the ’80s, is the funny heart of Certifiably Jonathan, writer-director Jim Pasternak’s weirdly offbeat mockumentary which is showing tomorrow and Sunday at the Rhode Island International Film Festival.

Humor goes up in smoke
The recent news that Richard Marin and Thomas Chong are going to reunite as Cheech and Chong, again doing their high-on-marijuana act that kept audiences in the 1970s doubled over with drug-induced laughter, shouldn’t come as a surprise to the producers of Pineapple Express.

Movie Review: ‘Louisa May Alcott’ is a tale of success
Despite her international fame for having written the classic Little Women, Louisa May Alcott tells us right up front at the start of the engrossing documentary Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women that she only wrote pap for young readers because it paid well.

08/07/2008

R.I. International Film Festival: ’50s horror films lovingly recalled in ‘Spine Tingler’
Baby Boomers who went to the movies in the 1950s will surely remember the films produced by William Castle, a huckstering showman who prided himself on being in a direct line from P.T. Barnum.

R.I. International Film Festival: ‘Garrison Keillor: The Man on the Radio with the Red Tennis Shoes’
You may know Garrison Keillor’s voice from his many appearances over the years on National Public Radio’s A Prairie Home Companion, a folksy mix of light humor, Will Rogers’ style common sense and the kind of music you don’t hear almost anywhere anymore.

R.I. International Film Festival: Heartthrob can’t lift sad lead role in ‘How to Be’
According to staff members at the 12th Rhode Island International Film Festival, the greatest interest in any film at this year’s festival has been generated by the British film How to Be, which will play tomorrow.

08/06/2008

The Sisterhood is funny, touching, sentimental
People who fell in love with the four teenage girls who overcame everyday crises in the 2005 hit The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants will be heartened to know that although the gals are now between their freshman and sophomore years at college, this sequel is every bit as solid and delightful as the original.

Rhode Island International Film Festival: Nashville guitarist was ‘Crazy’ — but biopic is on the level
While watching director Rick Bieber’s Crazy, I started to wonder why a movie this good has not yet been picked up for release by a major studio.

Rhode Island International Film Festival: Horse story is a classic — and it’s all true
Writer-director John Corey’s documentary Lost in the Fog, which will be screened tomorrow afternoon as part of the Rhode Island International Film Festival, is a Seabiscuit story for the 21st century.

08/01/2008

Movie review: When a presidential election relies on one man, Costner rocks the ‘Vote’
With its “and a little child shall lead them” theme revolving around a father whose single vote can decide the U.S. presidency, Swing Vote is certainly the most timely family-oriented comedy to come along in this presidential election year. And probably the only one.

Brideshead Revisited is revisited again, but briefly
Brideshead Revisited is an unimpeachable yet ultimately unmoving adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s classic novel about social ambition, religious conflict and doomed love.

Movie review: Tell everyone about this film noir thriller
In the shortcut language of a movie pitch, Guillaume Canet’s delicious contemporary thriller Tell No One is Vertigo meets The Fugitive by way of The Big Sleep. That is meant as high praise.

Movie review: Predictable battles unravel ‘The Mummy’
Apparently having exhausted the audience’s taste for Egyptology, the producers of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor have set their film in China just after World War II.

07/26/2008

Movie review: Politics and music mix uneasily in ‘CSNY: Déjà vu’
Remember when Country Joe McDonald sang his anti-Vietnam anthem “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die-

07/25/2008

Movie review: ‘The Rape of Europa’ is a fascinating look at the fate of great art during and after World War II
When people think about World War II, wondering what it meant for the fate of museum-quality art is probably not the first thing that comes to mind. Yet as the documentary The Rape of Europa demonstrates, this is a surprisingly vast and involving topic.

Movie Review: ‘The Wackness’ delivers a sweet summer of love
It’s the summer of Forrest Gump and O.J.’s Bronco ride, of Biggie Smalls and big shiny bling. And in Jonathan Levine’s The Wackness, 1994 in New York City is also the summer when forlorn Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck), just graduated from high school and heading for his safety school in the fall, pushes an ice cream cart stocked with weed around town, dealing dope and tumbling into love with his psychiatrist’s step-daughter … his pot-smoking, “I could get you a hooker if you want” psychiatrist, that is.

Movie Review: ‘Step Brothers’ a pathetic exercise in low-ball humor
Somewhere there’s an audience of 12-year-old boys waiting for Step Brothers. Yet, unless they’re able to corral an unwitting parent or guardian, they won’t be able to get into this bag of R-rated lowball humor where the F-bombs fly and the gags very often revolve around the male sex organ.

Movie Review: Duchovny and Anderson return to ‘The X-Files’ to find faith and forgiveness
The latest big-screen version of The X-Files TV series, The X-Files: I Want to Believe would make a pretty solid TV thriller, although it’s not quite The X-Files that fans of the old series fell in love with.

07/18/2008

Movie Review: ‘Encounters at the End of the World’ is a fascinating South Pole adventure
If you’ve ever wanted to visit the South Pole, and who hasn’t (just kidding!), you can take an armchair tour without subjecting yourself to the 20-below temperatures in German director Werner Herzog’s fascinating Encounters at the End of the World.

Movie Review: ‘Space Chimps’ monkey business is right in kids’ orbit
If you’re old enough to read this review, you aren’t the target audience for Space Chimps, a movie about chimpanzees sent in search of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Chimps, from the British animation studio that gave us Valiant, is one more of those cartoons that parents at least won’t mind sitting through while little Miss or Mister 8-and-under gets his or her chuckles at the cute talking primates.

Movie Review: Daffy musical ‘Mamma Mia!’ seems forced on the big screen
Mama mia! The international stage sensation Mamma Mia! trips over its platform shoes on the way to the movie screen.

Movie review: ‘Up the Yangtze’ documents the currents of change in China
Imagine the Grand Canyon turned into a lake. That image is summoned by Yung Chang, the Chinese-Canadian director and occasional narrator of Up the Yangtze, an astonishing documentary of culture clash and the erasure of history amid China’s economic miracle.

Movie Review: Memories bitter, then sweet in ‘When Did You Last See Your Father?’
Blake Morrison’s autobiographical book about the distance between fathers and sons has been turned into a sensitive, sentimental and melancholy film that will touch any male who has had difficulty bridging that particular generation gap.

07/17/2008

Movie review by Michael Janusonis: Stars shine in ‘The Dark Knight’
Following the rousing international success of director Christopher Nolan’s new, darker take on the Batman legend three years ago in Batman Begins, he’s back with much of the holdover cast from the first film for the slightly less somber The Dark Knight.

07/11/2008

Nonstop action is pure fun in updated Journey
Director Eric Brevig’s updated version of the Jules Verne classic Journey to the Center of the Earth is an old-fashioned, rip-roaring, seat-of-the-pants action film that harkens back to the days of the Saturday matinee movies of the 1950s.

Eddie Murphy muddles through lowbrow Meet Dave
Meet Dave. Or don’t. Eddie Murphy doesn’t particularly seem to care one way or the other.

Red is back and even better in ‘Hellboy II’
Thanks to the wild screen success of Hellboy four years ago, Red is back to save mankind anew in Hellboy II: The Golden Army, a fantasy-adventure that’s filled with galloping action, bizarre creatures and — surprise! — romance.

Movie review: The curiously gentle ‘Edge of Heaven’ bristles with violence
There are six principal characters in The Edge of Heaven: two mothers, two daughters, a father and a son, all arranged in more or less symmetrical pairs. In the course of this extraordinary film by the German writer-director Fatih Akin (which won the best screenplay award in Cannes last year) children are lost, lost parents are never found, and generational and geographical distances grow wider.

07/04/2008

Movie review: Ambition and passion create a sudsy storm in ‘Before the Rains’
The clash of cultures in British-ruled India is the background for the steamy melodrama that unfolds in Before the Rains, opening today at the Jane Pickens Theater in Newport.

Movie Review: Fantastic imagery is half the point of The Fall
The Fall, a wacky fairy tale for grown-ups, is as stunning in its beauty as it is in its lack of logic.

Movie review: The Children of Huang Shi quickly turns sappy
The first 20 minutes of The Children of Huang Shi are breathtakingly, explosively thrilling.

07/02/2008

Movie Review: Unfunny ‘Hancock’ wears out its welcome
Will Smith’s Hancock is a summer popcorn movie that’s a ton of poppycock revolving around a boozy, unlikely superhero who tries to redeem himself with the advice of a kindly public relations man

Movie review: Abigail Breslin outshines script in “Kit Kittredge: An American Girl”
Although it’s set in 1934 at the height of the Great Depression, there’s something remarkably up-to-date about Kit Kittredge: An American Girl. It’s based on one of the dolls and books in a popular series that’s geared to girls 3 to 12, mixing historical fact and inspirational fiction.

06/27/2008

Movie review: ‘Wanted’ is a bloody good fantasy thriller
Near the start of the high-octane fantasy-thriller Wanted, a bullet rips through the back of a man’s head and comes out his forehead, followed by bloody splatters. It’s here that you know Russian-born director Timur Bekmambetov will take no prisoners in Wanted, a no-holds-barred stew of violence and mayhem.

Movie review: Undeniable charm brings good things to life in ‘WALL•E’
A dead planet and a love-starved robot are the unusual ingredients that make WALL•E spin. And spin it does, with romance, sentiment, adventure and some very funny moments.

06/20/2008

Movie review: Lame ‘Get Smart’ remake is too clever by half
Steve Carell tries to fill the shoe-phone shoes of Don Adams in Get Smart, a lame, not-so-funny update of the 1960s TV series.

Movie review: Not much to love about Myers’ ‘Guru’
The biggest audience Mike Myers is likely to stir for his unfunny The Love Guru is the Hindus who have been peppering movie critics for months with e-mails demanding that they get an advance preview of the film. They feared it would blaspheme their faith.

Movie review: Epic imagery is a strong backdrop for the tale of Khan
When a film called Mongol takes as its storyline the formative years of Genghis Khan, a conqueror who eventually controlled a fifth of the Earth, you know what you’ll be getting. But with this film you’ll be getting that and more.

06/13/2008

Less than incredible
The Incredible Hulk, the story of a mild-mannered scientist whose unwitting exposure to gamma radiation turns him green and huge when he gets angry? The comic book turned hit TV show turned movie? Didn’t we see that a few years ago?

World premiere at Columbus
One-time porn star Marilyn Chambers caused a stir when she arrived back in her native state last August to shoot the film Solitaire, in which she plays what appears to be the only cop on the beat in Pawtucket in this low-budget local production.

Priceless lacks the innocence of Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Priceless is a romantic comedy from France that’s loosely based on the film made of Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Not much Happening under all the good creepiness
In The Happening, Mother Nature decides that humanity is a dangerous virus — and gets to work eliminating the threat.

06/06/2008

Jolly panda-monium
Fast, outlandish and wonderfully zany, Kung Fu Panda is a wacky trip to a Chinese Wonderland where a clumsy, chubby panda with martial arts dreams gets to live out his fantasy and become the masterful Dragon Warrior.

Many layers of intrigue in French whodunit
A famous author is haunted by a ghost in director Claude Lelouch’s twisty melodrama Roman de Gare.

Unfortunately, Zohan is just a mess
Politics has always been a very iffy proposition for American comedies. But Adam Sandler takes a crack at it in You Don’t Mess With the Zohan in which the neverending Arab-Israeli conflict serves as the film’s very touchy background.

06/05/2008

La Corona (The Crown) is a prison documentary unlike any other
The women-behind-bars movie has been a staple of B-moviemakers for half a century. But La Corona (The Crown) is a documentary that gives a whole new look to the genre. The 40-minute film from Colombia will have its first screening at 2:30 p.m. tomorrow at the Jane Pickens Theater, on a double bill with the hour-long documentary The Big Question as part of the 11th Newport International Film Festival.

Ambitious family drama moves too slowly for too long
Self-sacrifice is at the center of the family drama August Evening, which will have its first showing at the 11th Newport International Film Festival at 9:15 p.m. tomorrow at the Opera House.

A thrilling and intimate portrait of Navy pilots
If you’ve ever dreamed of flying for the Navy, filmmaker Peyton Wilson’s film gives an up-close and very personal look at how to go about it. Her documentary Speed and Angels, which has its first showing the 11th Newport International Film Festival at 7 p.m. tomorrow at the Jane Pickens Theater, is probably the best recruiting tool the Navy has had in years.

06/04/2008

Documentary depicts the power of love
The documentary Life. Support. Music., which will have its first showing at 1 p.m. tomorrow at the 11th Newport International Film Festival, encompasses all the things of its title in its tale of the near death and long, painful rehabilitation of Jason Crigler, a well-respected New York City guitarist. Crigler was felled one night on stage by a brain hemorrhage at the age of 34.

Funny, sad tale is a must-see
If you can get to just one film at this year’s Newport International Film Festival, make it Wellness, which will have its first Newport International Film Festival screening at 2 p.m. tomorrow at the Opera House.

Murderer finds a new life is hard to come by
A 24-year-old man who has spent most of his young life in juvenile prisons for being the accomplice in the murder of a girl tries to create a new identity for himself in the provocative social drama Boy A, which will have its first showing at 1:15 p.m. tomorrow at the Opera House as part of the 11th Newport International Film Festival.

06/03/2008

How one man conquered the World Trade towers
On Aug. 7, 1974 a young Frenchman named Philippe Petit went where no man had gone before … and no one will be able to ever again … when he stepped out on a wire that had been strung 200 feet between the tops of the World Trade Center towers in Manhattan..

05/29/2008

Sex and The City, the movie: Gal pals back in fine form
Four years after Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte sipped their last cosmo and strapped on their last Manolo Blahnik sandal on HBO’s Sex and the City, they’re back in a big-screen follow-up to the runaway hit series to tie up some loose ends, struggle anew with relationships, uncover new crises and rediscover the power of friendship.

05/30/2008

The Strangers delivers brutal terror and suspense
For his debut feature film, writer-director Bryan Bertino set out to do nothing more than scare the pants off an audience.

05/23/2008

Sundance sensation is just pint-sized
Amateurish and small, Son of Rambow was the inexplicable hit of the Sundance Film Festival.

Movie review: Helen Hunt’s directorial debut frames sudsy “Then She Found Me”
Helen Hunt has won a best actress Academy Award for As Good As It Gets and four best actress Emmy Awards for Mad About You, as well as being a lauded stage actress. Now she makes her feature film directing debut in the romantic tragic-comedy Then She Found Me, not only working behind the camera with the likes of showbiz powerhouse Bette Midler, but on screen herself as the film’s central character. Talk about chutzpah!

05/21/2008

Movie review: A red-hot adventure for aging archaeologist in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
After 19 years away from the big screen it’s full-speed ahead for Harrison Ford and his alter ego, Indiana Jones, in Steven Spielberg’s rip-roaring adventure yarn Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Surfing and social woes down under
A movie with the title Bra Boys conjures up all sorts of images, most of them not pretty.

05/16/2008

Narnia: Prince Caspian a royal disappointment
My moviegoing companion was glad she’d taken my advice and watched The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe before we went to see the second film made from C.S. Lewis’s series of Narnia books — The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.

05/09/2008

Speed Racer doesn’t break any records
What should have been a fast 90-minute spin around the track, Speed Racer runs for two hours and 15 minutes … but seems like seven hours.

A screwy battle of the sexes
Ashton Kutcher’s Jack Fuller is a life-of-the-party guy who gets fired from his job by his boss, who also happens to be his father.

RISD’s best at sparkling film fest
Any longtime follower of the annual film-animation-video show at the Rhode Island School of Design will have noticed a gradual increase in the quality and depth of the works presented by the graduating seniors over the years. This year’s show, running May 14 to 17, is the best yet.

Mamet learns the jiu-jitsu of cinema
David Mamet finally makes a real movie with Redbelt.

05/02/2008

Movie Review: ‘Iron Man’ has soft touch with a superhero who comes to vibrant life at the hands of Robert Downey Jr.
The first of the summer blockbuster movies has arrived and in Iron Man the movies have found a thrilling new superhero.

A pleasant Made of Honor
A playboy waits 10 years before deciding to ask his best friend to marry him, only to discover she has just become engaged to someone else in the bubbly, if overly familiar Made of Honor.

They’re Young@Heart — and so is their music
They do punk.

Movie Review: Damaged souls drift through “My Blueberry Nights”
The road to romantic recovery is meandering, far-flung and thousands of miles long in My Blueberry Nights, Wong Kar Wai’s first English-language film.

04/25/2008

Movie Review: Sadly, very little Deception at all
A generic thriller with a generic title, Deception is so predictable you could guess what happens next even if the trailer hadn’t already given away just about every important plot development.

Movie Review: Richard Jenkins, formerly of Trinity Rep, shines in regular-guy role in ‘The Visitor’
You may not know you know Richard Jenkins, but you know him. And most likely, you’re a fan.

Movie Review: With Fey and Poehler, ‘Baby Mama’ is full of fun
Pregnant with complex twists that give birth to surprising complications, the often hilarious Baby Mama breaches its high-concept idea of a 37-year-old woman who hires a surrogate mother to carry her baby to term.

Movie Review: ‘Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay’ is raunchy and occasionally hilarious
A lot has changed since Harold and Kumar last partied their way onto the big screen way back in ’04, White Castle burgers in hand and sex on their minds.

04/18/2008

Pleasantly enjoyable martial arts
There might have been some people who, while watching one of The Lord of the Rings movies, had a particular light bulb pop up over their heads. “Hey, you know what would really make this great?,” they thought. “Some kung-fu by a couple of aging Asian action stars!”

Movie review: Immerse yourself with Dolphins and Whales: Tribes of the Ocean 3D, the latest IMAX underwater adventure
You’ll find the occasional whale fin in your face or a piece of algae tossed by a dolphin just out of arm’s reach in Dolphins and Whales: Tribes of the Ocean 3D, the latest save-the-planet nature film at the Feinstein IMAX.

Movie Review: No barriers to suspense and love in heartwarming La Misma Luna
La Misma Luna (Under the Same Moon) is an emotional and entertaining road picture about a little boy who crosses the Mexican border into the U.S. on a quest to find his mom. She works “without papers” and off the books in Los Angeles. It’s a warm drama that humanizes America’s current illegal immigration debate even as it sentimentally stacks the deck in favor of the undocumented.

One man’s attempt to find Osama has many surprises
With his disarming “redneck” grin and his even-tempered even-handedness, we could do a lot worse than have somebody like Morgan Spurlock lead the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

Movie Review: No thrills during a wasted 88 Minutes
88 Minutes lasts 108 minutes. It can’t even get that much right.

Movie Review: Unfunny Stein makes monkey business of ‘academic freedom’ in Expelled
Droning funnyman Ben Stein monkeys around with evolution in the new documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a cynical attempt to sucker Christian conservatives into thinking they’re losing the “intelligent design” debate because of academic “prejudice.”

Movie review: She loves him, she loves him not in the ribald comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Billed as “the world’s first romantic disaster comedy,” Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a sometimes funny, sometimes uncomfortably icky movie about a schlub who thinks his life is ruined when he’s dumped by his TV star girlfriend.

04/12/2008

This is one Prom Night you won’t be sorry to miss
There ought to be a rule, stashed in the Screen Actor’s Guild bylaws, that every actor cast as a villain in a slasher film has to watch Psycho and write a paper on Anthony Perkins.

A ‘serious’ writer’s despair in a frivolous world
Starting Out in the Evening is more proof that the lonely life of the writer is never the most promising of movie premises. There isn’t much dramatic about what every such movie, especially this one, boils down to — a writer sitting down at a typewriter, tapping the keys.

04/11/2008

Street Kings: Somebody call for backup
Keanu Reeves tries his best to channel Denzel and Clint in Street Kings, a wild and woolly if also slack and silly bad-cops-kill-other-bad-cops thriller. It’s Training Day with training wheels, as Reeves sheds his “dude”-ness for a little ultra-violence, playing a racist cop-executioner, a man who always gets his man. And then shoots his man.

Movie Review: Mismatched hearts beat in the right place
Meet Jack, an advertising copy writer who’s living the high life in New York — fancy clothes, car, condo, natty career — all the consumer perks that go along with being a hot-shot advertising copy writer. He seems shallow.

Nothing smart about this charmless movie
Despite quality ingredients, soufflés still fall flat.

Life’s a Drag — and these entertaining guys are loving it
While watching a preview of the upcoming IMAX film Dolphins and Whales: Tribes of the Ocean 3D, which unravels some of the mysteries and mystique about these familiar yet relatively unknown creatures, it occurred to me that Lara Sebastian’s intriguing documentary Life’s a Drag accomplishes pretty much the same thing in the way it unravels the mysteries and mystique of drag queens.

Amateur cast brings Beirut to life in beauty-shop classic
There have been a couple thousand American movies in which the gals let it all hang out down at the beauty shop.

04/05/2008

Movie Review: Intense, effective frights await upon a creepy hilltop in The Ruins
The Ruins is, with one major caveat, about as good an adaptation of Scott Smith’s best-selling novel as Hollywood was ever going to make. Smith’s book — about a group of college kids who stumble onto a hill in the Mexican jungle where a flesh-eating vine dwells — was the kind of relentless beach read that seemed tailor-made for the movies, at least until you realized you were dealing with a story about a talking plant that drinks blood.

04/03/2008

Scorsese shines light on Stones
Shine a Light, the Martin Scorsese-directed Rolling Stones concert film, starts off looking like a documentary on the making of Shine a Light, the Martin Scorsese-directed Rolling Stones concert film. The director and Stones frontman Mick Jagger butt heads over the stage set and the cameras. The band rehearses, yet seems dubious about the whole thing. Scorsese hectors the group for days for a set list; he seemingly gets one literally five seconds before “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.”

04/04/2008