"We've come to it at last," declares Gandalf (Ian McKellen), "thegreat battle of our time."Indeed we have.After seven years of writing, directing and producing "The Lord ofthe Rings," visionary filmmaker Peter Jackson finally brings down thecurtain on the greatest piece of cinematic fantasy yet ...
A Farrelly brothers movie with a PG-13 rating should be a red flag toaudiences.The filmmaking team of Bobby and Peter Farrelly epitomized thegross-out humor of the past decade with standouts such as "There'sSomething About Mary," which ushered in a new critical and commercialappreciation for ...
It's interesting to examine how Hollywood has viewed Japan recently.Within the past few months, three high-profile films were releasedthat all hinge on a Westerner's perception of the Land of the RisingSun.First came Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation," which centered ontwo Americans (Bill ...
Contemporary filmmakers are always challenged when trying to put a new spin on the old West.Already this year, Kevin Costner's "Open Range" took the venerable squatters vs. ranchers plot and added an introspective, violent flair to it. And next week "The Last Samurai" takes Tom Cruise's Civil ...
At their core, Dr. Seuss' books contain a legitimate message.From the racism fable "The Sneetches" to the ecologically cautionary"The Lorax," author Theodor Geisel found a means to make hiscolorful, wildly inventive tales resonate beyond the images.But Hollywood adaptations have a way of ...
"We all create our own realities, to some extent," Halle Berry saysin "Gothika."It's just that some filmmakers create them better than others.In this dismal thriller, Berry plays Dr. Miranda Grey, a criminalpsychologist who works in the psych ward of a penitentiary. There shetries to help ...
Since mathematical perfection is crucial to the whole foundation ofthe "Matrix" franchise, then here are a few equations to consider:As much of a drop-off in quality as last May's release of "The MatrixReloaded" was in comparison to the original film, that is how muchthe new "The Matrix ...
"Beyond Borders" spans as many eras and exotic locales as a JamesBond marathon on TNT. But it's more like a travelogue taken duringthe very periods you WOULDN'T want to go to these beautiful places:Ethiopia in 1984, Cambodia in 1989 and Chechnya in 1995.If the filmmakers had thrown in Somalia ...
In Clint Eastwood's Oscar-winning "Unforgiven," a young gunfighterjustifies a revenge-killing by telling his veteran partner, "I guessthey had it comin.'"Eastwood's character replies, "We all have it comin', kid."That statement stands as the binding theme in the filmmaker's latestwork, "Mystic ...
"Revenge is never a straight line," the woman code named Black Mamba (Uma Thurman) is advised.The line is emblematic of "Kill Bill - Vol. 1," because no revengemovie has ever been told in less of a straight line than this.After a six-year absence from writing and directing, celluloidmaestro ...