HARRY POTTER and his friends may soar through the air on broomsticks and dangle from flying cars in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the latest chapter in J.K. Rowling’s ongoing saga about a young orphan and his classmates at a boarding school for witches and wizards, but the film itself never takes flight the way it ought to. Despite the wealth of special effects that fill nearly every frame of this film, director Chris Columbus and screenwriter Steve... Read more
Wendy Crewson may not be a household name, but you’ve probably seen one of her movies. Over the past two decades, the Hamilton-born actress — who grew up in Winnipeg, Montreal, and points in-between — has played the supportive wife opposite Sam Neill (Bicentennial Man), Judge Reinhold (The Santa Clause), Arnold Schwarzenegger (The Sixth Day) and Harrison Ford (Air Force One). She also had a hilarious turn as a sexually frustrated woman who finds unexpected ecstasy through her lesbian daughter’s... Read more
SIGNS IS a daring bait-and-switch, in which director M. Night Shyamalan seems to promise his audience a movie about aliens and gives us a movie about God, instead. The film, which stars Mel Gibson as an Episcopal priest who has lost his faith following the tragic death of his wife, is about the need to believe that there is someone out there watching over us, and not just some empty meaningless void, and the film cannily plays with — and... Read more
It’s been eight years since Harrison Ford last played Jack Ryan, but the spirit of Tom Clancy haunts him still. His most successful role since then was that of the kick-ass plane-defending president in Air Force One. In his latest film, K-19: The Widowmaker — which marks a return to form after the disappointments of What Lies Beneath, Random Hearts and Six Days Seven Nights — he plays a Russian submarine commander, who takes the Soviet navy’s newest flagship on... Read more
Steven Spielberg hasn’t got Stanley Kubrick out of his system yet. In some respects, Minority Report is the sort of futuristic sci-fi chase movie that makes popcorn vendors smile. It’s also the sort of spectacular summer flick you expect a crowd-pleaser like Spielberg to excel at. But it also reflects the bleak, dystopic vision of things to come that made A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Spielberg’s realization of a project Kubrick spent years developing, so chilling and unfamiliar. Minority Report also stars... Read more
John Woo movies may be famous for their over-the-top action sequences, but what really makes them work is the way he focuses on the intense personal rivalry between his main characters. In films as varied as the Hong Kong classic The Killer and the Hollywood hit Face/Off, it’s the battle of wills between cop and criminal, and the spiritual struggle within the protagonists, that drives the gun battles and the slow-motion pyrotechnics. Like those other films, Windtalkers — a World... Read more
Memento, a smart, stylish neo-noir about a vengeful widower with memory problems that told its story backwards, proved director Christopher Nolan could work wonders with an original idea and a decent gimmick. Now Insomnia, a fairly straightforward and much more linear remake of a recent Norwegian thriller, shows Nolan can be just as compelling when he’s reworking more conventional material. This film marks one of those rare moments when a European story works fairly well in the hands of an... Read more
Every story worth telling is ultimately about a girl, says Peter Parker in Spider-Man, but the makers of Hugh Grant’s latest star vehicle, About a Boy, might disagree. Yes, the film, which is already a hit in England, stars Grant (in his best role since Four Weddings and a Funeral) as yet another promiscuous, commitment-phobic cad who, in this case, poses as a single father in order to pick up single mothers. And yes, some writers, looking for a way... Read more
The main characters are a little older and wiser than they were before, the action scenes are bigger and splashier than ever, and we see mercifully little of Jar Jar Binks, so it goes without saying that Attack of the Clones, the latest chapter in the Star Wars saga, is better than its convoluted, infantile predecessor, The Phantom Menace. But not by much. (more…) Read more
The fans have waited nearly 40 years for a big-screen adaptation of the Spider-Man comic book, and for the most part, Sam Raimi’s film does not disappoint. Tobey Maguire is very impressive as Peter Parker, the teen-aged wimp who acquires great strength, super reflexes, and the ability to climb walls and spin webs after he is bitten by a genetically engineered spider; even after he wakes up with a buff new bod, he still has the beaming grin and nervous... Read more
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