Search for 2005

Pacifiers are for infants. The same is true of The Pacifier. In fact, "infantile" may be the best single word to describe this Kindergarten Cop wannabe. Vin Diesel is better than the material, but, no matter how hard he tries, he can't rise abov...

It's a risky proposition for any artist (director, author, etc.) to humanize a terrorist. In an era when many things have been reduced to black-and-white, the word "terrorist" has become synonymous with "evil." And evil can only be demonized. Becau...

Pretty Persuasion opens with more promise than it closes with. It doesn't take long for the cattily satirical tone to become monotonous as the characters refuse all attempts at development and the plot treads water into the shallows. The film tri...

When Hollywood adapts, we get Bewitched and The Dukes of Hazzard. When the British film industry adapts, we get Shakespeare and Austen. This explains why there is another version of Pride & Prejudice to be digested. And, while nothing will come clo...

Consider a movie that takes place in the Big Apple and features a heterosexual romance with an age gap, a dose of "Jewishness," a psychoanalyst, and an ending that doesn't pander to all the usual clichés. This may sound like Woody Allen - in fact...

The Producers is a movie based on a play based on a movie about a play. And that's probably the funniest thing about it. In 1968, Mel Brooks made his big-screen directorial and writing debut with The Producers, a slapstick farce about how two B...

Chen Kaige's The Promise is a beautiful film, filled with stylized, CGI-enhanced foregrounds and backgrounds that look like they were lifted directly from fairy tale-inspired paintings. There's not much about the look of The Promise that's realist...

Maybe it's my math/engineering background, but I found Proof to be fascinating both on the stage and on the screen. Actually, appreciation of the film demands little math knowledge (aside from recognizing that a "proof" is a logical set of equatio...

It is said that revenge is a dish best served cold. The Proposition illustrates that, extending the metaphor, revenge is more often bitter than sweet. Gritty to the point of being disturbing, The Proposition examines the revenge thriller not as t...

The Quiet is a psychological thriller from director Jamie Babbit (But I'm a Cheerleader) that takes viewers to darker places than those to which one is typically transported in movies of this sort. The subject matter includes four kinds of abuse: ...