Search for 2004

Two things are readily apparent about Kill Bill Volume 2. First, unlike its predecessor, this is a complete movie. It stands on its own. It is possible to see and enjoy Volume 2 in a way that was not true of Volume 1. Viewed in retrospect, the ...

Kings and Queen, the 2004 film by French director Arnaud Desplechin, is wending its way slowly across North America, making its way into select art houses. The movie is quintessentially French, focusing on drama instead of melodrama and character ...

Kung Fu Hustle is an action/comedy designed with lovers of the '60s and '70s Shaw Brothers' movies in mind. It's an homage to a genre that, despite being regarded as campy by about 95% of the movie-going populace, has nevertheless captured the hea...

The Ladykillers is an interesting concoction - a faithful update of the original Ealing comedy cooked in vat of Coen Brothers' seasoning. Even though this is based on the 1955 British film of the same name, those unfamiliar with The Ladykillers' p...

Layer Cake is the latest in the recent cluster of British gangster/caper films begun by Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Matthew Vaughn, the director and co-producer of Layer Cake, held the producing credit for Lock and Ritchie's...

Layer Cake is the latest in the recent cluster of British gangster/caper films begun by Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Matthew Vaughn, the director and co-producer of Layer Cake, held the producing credit for Lock and Ritchie's...

There's a little Roald Dahl in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, and that leads one to wonder what a twisted director like Danny DeVito (Dahl's Matilda) or Tim Burton (Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) could have made out of ...

At first glance, Look at Me appears to be a standard French drama about a dysfunctional family. All the elements are in place: the domineering father whose celebrity status has made him indifferent to the needs of his family, the meek trophy wife,...

A noir horror movie of the most un-classic kind, Brad Anderson's The Machinist takes you into the unstable mind of an insomniac with a dark secret whose life has become a bleak emotional wasteland devoted only to going through the motions of workin...

As remakes go, The Manchurian Candidate is better than most. It remains faithful to the premise and themes of the original, but, by avoiding a slavish re-interpretation, it offers some surprises to those who are familiar with the 1962 version. Ye...