Search for 2006

With each new outing, the Final Destination movies are getting better. At this rate, by the fifth or sixth entry in the series, one of them will finish the year in my Top 10. Or maybe the films' relentless pursuit of creative mayhem and murder is...

Vin Diesel as a Joisey mobster? As improbable as it might sound, Diesel offers a credible turn as Giacomo 'Jackie D' DiNorscio, one of about 20 members of the Lucchese crime family to go on trial for violation of the RICO (Racketeering Influenced ...

February thrillers often get a bad rap, and deservedly so. Most of them are plodding retreads with little star power and less plot. So it's a surprise to see something as (relatively) well-crafted as Firewall showing up in theaters this month. Th...

Like most intelligent movies that dare to demand that the movie viewer think by pondering the question of predestination versus self-determination, First Snow is a downbeat affair. The interest here isn't whether the main character will circumvent...

Flags of Our Fathers is Clint Eastwood's homage to the honored dead of World War II as well as a meditation upon how an icon is formed. Based on the book by James Bradley and Ron Powers, the movie centers around the Battle of Iwo Jima, one of the ...

In the past few years, CGI animated films have fallen into a depressing rut. The objective has become getting a product out the door rather than taking the time and effort to produce something memorable. The result has been a generic, formulaic m...

When you think of Christopher Guest, the first thing likely to spring to mind is fake documentaries. He has made his reputation in the arena. From This Is Spinal Tap (which he co-wrote but did not direct) to A Mighty Wind, Guest has turned his came...

The Fountain is Darren Aronofsky trying to be Stanley Kubrick. However, while Aronofsky is able to match Kubrick frame-by-frame for ending ambiguity, that's one of the few areas in which The Fountain keeps pace with 2001. Technically, this is an im...

Freedomland is one of an increasingly endangered species: the adult movie that's about something. By "something," I mean a serious issue - the kind of thing films shy away from for fear of alienating viewers. Underneath the trappings of a police ...

Fur uses the real-life name and some of the real-life background of photographer Diane Arbus (Nicole Kidman) as the launching point for an entirely fictional romance. The movie is open about its aims and doesn't try to hide the fact that this is n...