Search for 2002

Heaven represents the fusion of stoic contemplation with kinetic mysticism – German filmmaker Tom Tykwer's adaptation of the final screenplay by the great Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski (who wrote it with longtime partner, Krzysztof P...

One of the most depressing movie-going experiences I can think of is to sit through about 90 minutes of a so-called "comedy" and not laugh once. Unfortunately, that is becoming an all-too-common occurrence. Rob Schneider's The Hot Chick is the mo...

Hats off to 20th Century Fox. Through a marketing campaign which can be considered nothing less than astonishing, the studio has managed to convert Ice Age from an adequate (but hardly superlative) example of family entertainment into one of 2002'...

The chief pleasure to be found in any version of Oscar Wilde's play, The Importance of Being Earnest, is the dialogue, and Oliver Parker's re-interpretation is no different. All of the great lines are here: "The very essence of romance is uncertai...

Since one of the duties of a film critic is to provide readers with enough ammunition for them to make an informed decision about whether a movie is likely to match their tastes, I must begin with a stern warning. Irreversible is the kind of film ...

One aspect that virtually assures a good motion picture is solid character development (sometimes referred to as a "character arc"). It doesn't matter if it's a mainstream movie or an offbeat indie - any narrative-based film benefits if the charact...

The best animated films are the ones that work on multiple levels, allowing children and adults to engage, often in different ways, with the characters and story. Throughout its history, Walt Disney Pictures has excelled in making those kinds of f...

Lilya 4-Ever is the third film from Swedish filmmaker Lukas Moodysson, but, in terms of both tone and content, this effort is so different from the director's other work that it's difficult to credit that all three are the product of one man. (Thi...

If there is a primary quality needed to bring J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings to the screen, it is vision - an attribute possessed in abundance by director Peter Jackson. In more than 100 years of motion pictures, few cinematic campaigns of...

The battle lines surrounding The Magdalene Sisters were drawn long before it reached its limited North American theatrical distribution on August 1, 2003. The film, which shines a light into the shadowy recesses of religious/sexual repression in I...