Hollywood has been trying to make a live-action movie out of Speed Racer since the early 1990s: At one point, Johnny Depp was set to play the hero. But it was The Matrix creators Larry and Andy Wachowski who figured out how to transplant the 1960s Japanese anime TV show into the world of flesh-and-blood while still retaining the colorful palette and outlandish physical action the show was famous for around the world.
Write your own reviewWere Larry and Andy Wachowski just really, really lucky when they made The Matrix? Speed Racer, the brothers' live-action, special-effects intensive adaptation of the beloved TV cartoon, is such a dull, clunky, joyless mess, it's hard to believe the people who made it understand much about movies.
Write your own reviewThe best directors can take on practically any genre, no matter how hoary or formulaic, and turn a film into something dynamic and interesting by approaching it from their particular vantage point. In Redbelt, David Mamet enters the realm of sports drama and Rocky-underdog clichés and discovers it's a surprisingly good fit.
Write your own reviewThe latest uptight chick/slacker dude romantic comedy is so formulaic, you could win big if you placed bets on what's going to happen next.
Write your own reviewSensitively adapted from the achingly sad, luminous novel by Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces is a story of unspeakable loss and how it eats at the souls of survivors. Made with an unerring visual dazzle -- its dark corners are shadowy, deep and melancholy, its brilliant seascapes the sparkling embodiment of why we must all find a reason to carry on -- the film follows the life of Jakob Beer, a young Jewish boy plucked from his hiding place under a pile of leaves after a Nazi raid on his Polish village...
Write your own reviewIs love just another four-letter word? That's the question that haunts Casper Andreas' well-crafted, deceptively light-'n'-fluffy romantic comedy.
Write your own reviewThe directing debut of Oscar-winning actress Helen Hunt, Then She Found Me, is less noteworthy for its erratic parts than for its atmospheric whole. Here's a film that whips loss, romantic yearning and the accelerating ticking of a woman's biological clock into a moody dramady that is by turns touching and exasperating.
Write your own reviewOn the comic-book rack, Iron Man has never come close to achieving the popularity of all-star Marvel Comics superheroes such as Spider-Man or The X-Men. But the character turns out to be a natural for the movies. Unlike the colorful -- and, let's face it, silly -- tights and capes most other do-gooders run around in, Iron Man's gleaming yellow-and-red armor has the sheen and polish of a showroom sports car, and it's loaded with an entire Batcave's worth of trinkets and gadgets. It's a fantastic special...
Write your own reviewIf we held a competition among Grey's Anatomy stars to evaluate who made the best adult romantic comedy in recent memory, Katherine Heigl (27 Dresses) would crush Patrick Dempsey under her stilettos without even breaking a sweat. (Not that Heigl sweats; one suspects she exudes fragrant mist.)
Write your own reviewSeductive and intoxicating, playfully surreal and inexplicably moving, Jellyfish is almost impossible to pin down or even categorize. Artistic, daring, surprising, it resists fitting into words.
Write your own reviewWere the World Mine closes the 10th Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival on a musical, fantastical note. The movie, which director Tom Gustafson expanded from his short film Fairies, takes the familiar scenarios of high school angst and adolescent crushes and gives them a wonderful musical spin, complete with elaborate sets and choreography.
Q: A long time ago, I saw a movie with Andy Griffith and he was the bad guy. He and two others on dirt bikes were harassing a couple in a pickup. The film ended with Andy flying (in slow motion) off a cliff on his bike. What is the name of the picture and is it available?
BY HOWARD COHEN Teeth, a 2007 Sundance Film Festival jury award winner for lead actress Jess Weixler, toys with the idea of ``female empowerment.''
When first we meet Texan Congressman Charlie Wilson in Charlie Wilson's War (Universal; $29.98; R), he's naked in a Vegas hot tub with coke-sniffing strippers who find his sudden fascination with images on a nearby television puzzling, given the amenities they offer.
