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
Barry Pepper is going back to the battlefield. The 32-year-old actor, who grew up in the Gulf Islands after sailing the South Seas with his family for five years, and who got his start working in Vancouver’s film and TV scene, became internationally famous four years ago when Steven Spielberg cast him as a Bible-quoting sniper in Saving Private Ryan. Pepper’s career since then has included some box-office hits (Enemy of the State, The Green Mile) and one huge flop... Read more
The folks who brought you Pearl Harbor are now bringing you Black Hawk Down, and despite the fact that both war movies feature Josh Hartnett and Tom Sizemore in key military roles, the films are very different. Where Pearl Harbor was full of saccharine romance, nostalgic production design and eye-popping special effects, Black Hawk Down is a decidedly grim and realistic account of a botched military operation that resulted in the deaths of 18 Americans and more than 1,000 Somalis... Read more
In some Christian circles many people still wonder what to make of the young wizard Harry Potter, whose supernatural adventures have sold more than 100 million novels in 46 languages and set opening-attendance records at the movie theatres. What is the spiritual impact on children? Harry is an orphan whose parents, a witch named Lily and a wizard named James, died defending him from the evil Lord Voldemort. Harry grows up with hostile relatives who scorn magic and hide the... Read more
In her latest romantic comedy Kate & Leopold, Meg Ryan plays Kate McKay, a driven marketing executive with no love life who spends all her time looking for ways to sell things, from creamy butter to motion pictures. The first time we see her — well, sort of the first time we see her, but more on that below — she is at a test screening for a ridiculously saccharine movie bearing the all-too-obvious title Love For Sale. At one... Read more
Is life but a dream? Several recent movies have raised that question, and while it’s tempting to write off Vanilla Sky as the latest film to hop on the bandwagon, its roots go back a bit further. Before Waking Life asked whether our day-to-day lives might be just a dream from which we have yet to wake up, and before The Matrix suggested that the world was an illusion fed to our minds by an evil computer network, there was... Read more
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