Search for Danny

I define a "boo!" moment as an instant in a movie when there is a loud sound, usually accompanied by a musical stinger and occasionally in concert with the fast pass of an unidentifiable object across a portion of the camera's field of view. The i...

30 years have passed since the assassination of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and, the ballot passage of California's recent Proposition 8 notwithstanding, advances have been made in the area of gay rights, although there are still many hurd...

If David Lynch and David Mamet can do it, why not Danny Boyle? I'm talking about hard-R directors suddenly producing a film that is suitable for family viewing. Lynch and Mamet both went G several years ago (Lynch with The Straight Story and Mamet wi...

The first star vehicle of the summer of 1996 is also the first major disappointment of the season. Mission: Impossible, the big screen resurrection of the popular late-'60s/early-'70s series, fails to generate much in the way of excitement or ...

When a movie tries to be intentionally campy, it follows a difficult road. Most films that attempt this fail because the artifice of the situation drains the humor from it. Genuine camp is the child of earnestness and ineptitude, and is only foun...

The Next Three Days, Paul Haggis' adaptation of the 2008 French film, Anything for Her, uses an interesting concept as a cornerstone of the foundation. Instead of employing a seasoned professional as the lead character of this heist thriller, the ...

When I was a child, one of the reasons I enjoyed the Christmas season so much was the annual arrival of those endlessly-repeated television specials: Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, The Year Without a Santa Claus. ...

Last year, when I heard about a film on the way called Notorious, I was concerned that there would be an "updating" of Alfred Hitchcock's film of the same name. Thankfully, this is not the case. Notorious is not an example of a remake, but it is ...

Oz the Great and Powerful is director Sam Raimi's prequel to The Wizard of Oz. This new vision of The Land of Oz is an imaginative mix of live-action and CGI that pays homage to the iconic images and timeless sense of wonder in the classic The Wiza...

Gene Siskel infamously gave Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure a zero-star review, stating “Obviously, Pee-Wee is tolerable only in Pee-Wee doses…” Although that seems unnecessarily harsh, especially in retrospect (now that the film is commonly viewe...