Search for 2003

Inevitably, it seems, movie monsters will meet and tussle. Back in the '40s, Universal pulled out all the stops by getting the Frankenstein monster, the Wolf Man, and Dracula together for The House of Frankenstein. In 1962, Japan became the ba...

I saw Gigli for much the same reason that a good portion of the movie's eventual audience will see it. Jen and Ben? No. Morbid curiosity? Yes. After all, it had become fashionable to rip Gigli. The advance word on this film was so vicious tha...

Girl with a Pearl Earring is the first feature for director Peter Webber. Most freshman filmmakers don't come close to Webber's level of accomplishment, and (not to take anything away from him) some of the credit must certainly be parceled out to ...

There's certainly no shortage of rich threads woven into the tapestry of Good Bye, Lenin! Wolfgang Becker's movie (produced by Stefan Arndt, who has been involved in everything by Tom Tykwer, from Run Lola Run to Heaven) offers the touching story ...

When I first saw High Tension at the 2003 Toronto Film Festival, I wrote the following: " [High Tension] has virtually no chance of finding a North American distributor. After all, what's the market for slasher films with subtitles?" Imagine my ...

What happens when the so-called American Dream - a life of financial independence and home ownership - turns into the American Nightmare? For some, a house is just a place to stop and rest at night. For others, it's an investment - a means to bui...

One could easily make the argument that How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days is a perfectly acceptable diversion. Kate Hudson's Andie Anderson and Matthew McConaughey's Ben Barry are both affable individuals and, when the script allows it, there are fitfu...

Hulk represents the most involving superhero motion picture since >Superman soared skywards in 1978. By taking its time to develop characters and situations, Hulk does what so many action/adventure movies fail to do - allow us to really feel for t...

For whatever reason, the Coen Brothers' comedies (such as Raising Arizona, The Hudsucker Proxy, and The Big Lebowski) have always garnered less critical attention than the filmmakers' more serious fare (such as Blood Simple, Barton Fink, and Fargo)...

The 2003 version of The Italian Job is less of a straightforward remake of the 1969 picture than it is a complete re-interpretation. Enough has changed that it's possible to see the two films not as the same story separated by three decades, but a...