Search for 2004

Shaun of the Dead is a spoof, but at the same time, it's a semi-serious horror movie. It's also an homage to George Romero's Dead series (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead) and a societal commentary. Admittedly, with so ...

A certain amount of credit must be given to the filmmaking team behind Shrek 2 for overcoming a seemingly insurmountable obstacle and producing an entertaining motion picture. That obstacle is the ending of the original Shrek, which neatly wrapped...

Sideways is from Alexander Payne (Election, About Schmidt), whose films simultaneously satirize and observe life in America. Unlike David Lynch, who uses saws and butcher knives to dissect the American dream, Payne prefers a scalpel. Lynch often ri...

John Sayles has always made political films; they are his bread-and-butter. Yet none, not even Matewan or City of Hope, has been more openly partisan than Silver City, which rips into the anti-environmental policies of the current administration, ...

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is about 70% style and 30% substance. It has a plot and characters, but those are almost beside the point. They are devices that function as hooks upon which first-time director Kerry Conran can hang his amaz...

Spider-Man 2 has all the elements of a good, but not great, superhero motion picture. While lacking the tragic grandeur that made last year's Hulk such a unique experience, Spider-Man 2 fills the void with solid character development, self-referen...

The mining of old television shows continues, and, while one wouldn't expect much from a movie version of the vintage late-1970s TV cop series, Starsky and Hutch, this is one time when the filmmakers have uncovered some surprisingly rich ore. The ...

Amidst all the controversy this film has generated, it's safe to say one thing: very few viewers are likely to visit a fast-food restaurant immediately after seeing this movie. Is Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me an attack on McDonald's? Not di...

The line between epic spectacle and overblown bore is often as unclear as it is easily crossed. So it's no surprise that Wolfgang Petersen's Troy navigates that demarcation like a drunk driver on a twisty two-lane highway. There are times when T...