http://www.citypaper.com/film Baltimore City Paper film and television coverage en-us Copyright 2009 Baltimore City Paper http://www.citypaper.com/digest.asp?id=17313 Arts and Minds by Chris Landers: Good News: AMC has all of the old episodes of 1960s British television series The Prisoner for free on its web site. Bad News: The network is only doing it to promote a remake--sorry, "reinterpretation"--of The Prisoner. Indifferent news: I scored a shockingly poor 35% on AMC's Prisoner Trivia quiz.... Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14310 Film Clips by Bret McCabe: Local filmmaking machine Chris LaMartina debuts a new horror short tonight prior to showing his and co-writer Jimmy George's latest feature, the omnibus Grave Mistakes. For "One Foot in the Grave" George and LaMartina get entertainingly silly, following the outright ridiculous exploits of a witch in... Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:53:49 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14309 Film by Rob Boylan: If there was an academy award for Best Growling in a Motion Picture (and there should be), Clint Eastwood would be the prohibitive favorite every time out. Sure, the bravado and the mean, chiseled face are the hallmarks of Eastwood the actor, but the squinty-eyed snarl is his signature and he delive... Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:49:42 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14308 Film by Geoffrey Himes: Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet are two of the most attractive stars, so why do they seem downright unkissable in Revolutionary Road? Why has DiCaprio disappeared inside the pudgy, glum face of Frank Wheeler, a marketing expert for the IBM-like Knox Business Machines? Why has Winslet shrunk into... Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:48:48 EST http://www.citypaper.com/digest.asp?id=17291 Arts and Minds by Lee Gardner: Tipster Runnykine directed us to a post just put up on a LiveJournal community page called Abandoned Places that captures images of a trove of lost Baltimore cultural trash/treasure: photographs of the former sound stage of The Wire. Posted by "Patty Boh," the photos depict the litter-strewn interio... Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST http://www.citypaper.com/digest.asp?id=17288 Arts and Minds by Bret McCabe: Now that The Wire has once again earned a place in many critic's and publication's year-end Top 10 lists and DVD accolades, single episodes shout outs, and even a spot in the American Film Institute's official list of TV programs of the year, 2008 ends with a bit of interesting online chatter about... Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14290 Film Clips by Bret McCabe: Jean-Luc Godard's 1966 episodic portrait of '60s young people is both the platonic ideal of the carefree youth movie and the critical examination of that very entertainment and existence. Masculine Feminine follows young Parisians into cafes, Laundromats, and movie theaters in 15 mundane, prismatic,... Tue, 30 Dec 2008 12:35:11 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14287 Film Clips by Serena Donadoni: John Grogan (Owen Wilson) is a newspaper columnist who documents his middle-class marriage and family life--along with extreme canine misbehavior--and shares these experiences with readers who identify with his everyday struggles. The Marley & Me constructed by director David Frankel is conventi... Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:44:37 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14286 Film Clips by Bret McCabe: This flummoxing 1961 diamond from director Alain Resnais and screenwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet takes one of the lamest pickup lines ever--Haven't I seen you somewhere before?--and turns it into the most absurdly elegant and decadently formalist exercise in high modernism ever frozen in time on cellul... Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:41:54 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14285 Film Clips by Al Shipley: Disney's latest live-action feature is a typically wide-eyed, PG-rated family flick about magic and imagination. But it's also an Adam Sandler vehicle, and while his silly voices and lowbrow humor have always had a certain childlike appeal, he appears to chafe against the limitations of a project th... Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:37:15 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14284 Film by John Barry: In one of the standout scenes in Doubt, Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) interrupts basketball practice to ask a small group of 14-year-old kids to check out his fingernails. "They're a little long," he notes, "but I keep them clean." So goes the movie itself: an extended, polished, and creepy... Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:36:26 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14283 Film by Cole Haddon: The Reader begins as a riddle of sorts, with an emotionally shut-off German attorney, Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes), kicking a beautiful woman out of his apartment before the sight of a tram inexplicably takes him back to 1958. As a teenager Michael (David Kross) begins an illicit relationship with... Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:35:29 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14282 Film by Violet Glaze: "We have to show the world that not all of us are like him," vows Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise) to a crowded room full of his fellow Nazi officers. They've gathered to plot the overthrow of the Third Reich, starting with the assassination of Hitler and ending with an elegantly crafted... Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:34:42 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14281 Film by Bret McCabe: Ron Howard directing a Peter Morgan script should be a home run. Morgan revels in the talky machinations of power brokering--see: The Queen, The Last King of Scotland, the BBC's The Deal--and Howard is at his best when dramatizing the behind-the-scenes wonk work of events' public faces, whether it b... Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:34:00 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14280 Film by Violet Glaze: David Fincher loves death and decay. All of his best movies, from Fight Club to Se7en to Zodiac, revel in how the world is falling apart, physically and spiritually--a decrepitude that even extends to the distressed and grainy film stock on which his gleeful doomsday parables flicker. So it makes s... Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:33:16 EST http://www.citypaper.com/digest.asp?id=17242 Arts and Minds by Wendy Ward: The Autism Society of America and AMC Entertainment have partnered to provide a safe movie-watching environment for families touched by autism and other disabilities. At 10 a.m. Jan. 3 at participating AMC theaters in the area--While Marsh, Columbia Mall, Tysons Corner, Potomac Mills, and Gaithersbu... Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14238 Film Clips by Jeff Niesel: A Christmas celebration takes a turn for the worse when Anna (Elizabeth Peña) announces that she plans to divorce Edy (Alfred Molina), her husband of many years, because she suspects he's been having an affair. The adult children all react differently, and we soon learn each has his or her own... Tue, 16 Dec 2008 10:30:42 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14237 Film Clips by Robert Ignizio: Director Robert Wise exercised subtlety and taste with his 1951 The Day the Earth Stood Still--one of that era's few science-fiction movies that can still play to modern audiences as something other than camp--putting story and character ahead of special effects and action. That can't be said about... Tue, 16 Dec 2008 10:28:01 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14236 Film Clips by Cole Haddon: Ostensibly an adaptation of Danny Wallace's memoir of the same name, director Peyton Reed appears only to be interested in the book's basic premise, that a man says yes to everything for a year--from credit card offers to invitations to people on the street--and spun that idea into a sometimes funny... Tue, 16 Dec 2008 10:26:03 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14235 Film Clips by Jason Morgan: For whatever reason, rodents have a rich film history, from Disney's 1950 Cinderella to last year's Oscar-winning Ratatouille. The Tale of Despereaux is the story of a young mouse (Matthew Broderick) whose bravery brings together a royal family and breathes life into a village obsessed with soup. Od... Tue, 16 Dec 2008 10:25:22 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14234 Film Clips by Bret McCabe: Seven Pounds dedicates itself to the what and the why. What is IRS agent Ben Thomas (Will Smith) doing harassing a blind salesman (Woody Harrelson) in the opening minutes? What interest does Thomas have in the attractive Emily (Rosario Dawson) he tracks to a Los Angeles hospital? What is the plan Th... Tue, 16 Dec 2008 10:24:36 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14233 Film by Geoffrey Himes: There's a reason French novelist Philippe Claudel cast Kristin Scott Thomas as the protagonist in his debut as a director, I've Loved You So Long, and it's not because the British actress speaks flawless French. It's because filmgoers have an indelible memory of Thomas's perfect cheekbones and mesm... Tue, 16 Dec 2008 10:24:08 EST http://www.citypaper.com/digest.asp?id=17208 CPTV by Frank Hamilton: A walk from the 2008 Baltimore Washington Monument lighting to Joe Squared Pizza and the first annual 2-PIECE & A BISCUIT art show. ... Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14214 Film by Bret McCabe: Director Arnaud Desplechin's A Christmas Tale contains all the dysfunctional holiday trappings audiences have come to expect from seasonal dramedy fare: the illness of a family matriarch brings an entire family together for the holidays, including the banished bad boy brother Henri (Mathieu Amalric)... Tue, 09 Dec 2008 13:53:29 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14212 Film by Lee Gardner: Max Ophüls' mutilated 1955 masterpiece Lola Montes has needed a proper restoration for more than half a century, and it re-emerges fully redone at just the right moment. While cocaine, limo-exit upskirts, and reality shows were unknown in early 19th-century Europe, the real-life Lola Montez was... Tue, 09 Dec 2008 13:48:58 EST http://www.citypaper.com/digest.asp?id=17161 Arts and Minds by Bret McCabe: One of the more politically anarchistic television shows in recent memory says farewell tonight with a two-hour series finale from Boston Legal. And this show's outright ridiculousness comes from an unlikely source, perennial middlebrow television scribe David E. Kelley, the man behind the heinous A... Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14209 Film Clips by Bret McCabe: The first half of director Gus Van Sant's moving portrait of assassinated activist Harvey Milk (Sean Penn), the first openly gay man elected to public office in the United States, is a fascinating mix of archival footage, historical re-enactment, and bravura acting. Newsreel footage discloses the 19... Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:13:23 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14208 Film Clips by Bret McCabe: Writer/director Darnell Martin resorts to just about every music-movie cliché in this mythologized portrait of Chicago's proto rock 'n' roll label Chess Records. Fact: From the 1950s to the late 1960s, Chess--founded by a pair of Polish Jew brothers Leonard (Adrien Brody) and Phil (all but writ... Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:10:05 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14205 Film by Jess Harvell: For a movie that could theoretically be described as a weepy-ass 90-minute soap opera with intermittent sword fights, Ashes Of Time Redux sure demands a lot from its audience. Viewers looking for updated Shaw Brothers kineticism or kung-fu kitsch are advised to steer clear of director Wong Kar-Wai'... Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:03:39 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14186 Film by Al Shipley: Brad (Vince Vaughn) and Kate (Reese Witherspoon) are a loving, committed couple who, as children of divorce nursing deep psychological scars, have absolutely no plans for marriage or children. And every Christmas they head to a tropical island for vacation, and manufacture a cover story to avoid see... Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:09:04 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14185 Film by Bret McCabe: Two hours into writer/director Baz Luhrmann's reprehensible Australia, an older aboriginal man stands silently gazing at the deplorable display of civilized man's existence as flying machines drop bombs onto a city and hospitals! and cars! and men! and women! and children! run and scream and hopes... Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:02:44 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14167 DVD+Conquer by Bret McCabe: THE MOVIE Hungarian director János Szász's 2007 Opium: Diary of a Madwoman has some rather grim online-only reviews for a title that appears to have been screened primarily at festivals, reviews that soberly remark on its slow pace, its treatment of the (possibly) mentally impaired, its sh... Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:22:08 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14158 Film by Cole Haddon: Since winning the coveted People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Festival, Slumdog Millionaire has established itself as the most-hyped art movie of the year. Director Danny Boyle's India-based drama is not the feel-good, life-changing experience so many would have you believe, though. T... Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:26:35 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14157 Film by Steve Erickson: If Jia Zhang Ke didn't exist, Western critics would have to invent him. He emerged on the festival circuit just as former bad boy Zhang Yimou was taking on the mantle of mainland China's official filmmaker. Most explicitly in 2004's The World (Shijie), he's accepted the role of globalization's bard.... Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:23:08 EST http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14156 Film by Violet Glaze: When young boys in short pants and sweater vests spread their arms like airplane wings and buzz through charming market squares, you can be certain you're watching a movie about World War II. The filmmakers behind The Boy in the Striped Pajamas don't even give you a courtesy moment to let you figure... Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:16:06 EST