Search for 2006

With Apocalypto, Mel Gibson has proven it's possible to create a compelling action/adventure film in almost any setting. Gibson's theme (which is only partially developed), as revealed in an opening caption, is that all great civilizations fail wh...

It's not a stretch to say that I am not a member of Aquamarine's target demographic. It's a good bet that about 90% of the film's viewers will be girls between the ages of 8 and 14. I'm sure the movie works better for them than it did for me. St...

For Art School Confidential, director Terry Zwigoff has re-teamed with Daniel Clowes for an offbeat and bitingly satirical look at the college era coming of age story. Considering Zwigoff's resume, which includes Bad Santa and Ghost World (based o...

For Ask the Dust, director Robert Towne, adapting the novel by John Fante, has returned to the time and place of his greatest cinematic endeavor: Los Angeles in the 1930s. The setting, however, is the only similarity between Ask the Dust and China...

For every dozen-or-so teen-based dramas about white kids, there are maybe one or two similarly themed films about children of other races. So when one of the latter comes along that offers keenly observed characters involved in interesting situatio...

Sometimes movies don't have to be complicated. They don't have to "say" anything or espouse a particular philosophy. There doesn't have to be a deeper meaning beyond exploring slices in the lives of several unpretentious characters. Such is the c...

It has been said that Alzheimer's is the only "major" terminal condition to exact a greater toll on the family than the victim. Compared to cancer (for example), Alzheimer's offers a relatively gentle journey into oblivion for the patient, a gradu...

Babel represents director Alejando Gonzalez Iñárritu's conclusion to a stylistic and thematic trilogy begun in Amores Perros and continued in 21 Grams. Of the three, Babel is arguably the most accessible. As with 21 Grams (and to a lesser degree ...

Who would have imagined that the most appropriate word to describe Basic Instinct 2 would be "boring?" This plodding, pretentious follow-up to 1992's hit replaces Paul Verhoeven's lurid, over-the-top style with the leaden rhythms of Michael Caton-...

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon may be the best horror spoof no one has ever seen. Or at least, that was the case when Starz/Anchor Bay dumped the film into a small number of theaters during mid-March 2007 with little publicity and no ad...