Bruce Almighty

[Our Sunday Visitor, May 27, 2003]

People may disagree over whether a glass is half empty or half full, but both sides have to admit that it's about half what it could be. "Bruce Almighty" is about half of "It's a Wonderful Life," the 1939 classic that it admires so much. On the plus side, it's got Jim Carrey in fine form, crackling with better-than-average lines and excellent timing. I'm not a fan of Scary Carrey, although some viewers prefer the hypermanic vicious Jim of earlier films.

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Matrix Reloaded, A Mighty Wind, Down with Love

[Our Sunday Visitor, May 19, 2003]

The Matrix Reloaded

George Lucas, watch your back: the Wachowski brothers have gone and made a Star Wars movie. The writing-directing team that gave us “The Matrix” (1999) is back with “The Matrix Reloaded.” It’s got a multi-level industrial hideout for the good guys. It’s got giant walking robot thingies. It’s got grandiose background music. It’s got gray-haired councilors saying grim and ponderous things. It’s got bold crews on ships—not a space ships, but ones that travel inside the earth, so I guess they’re dirt ships.

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The Matrix of Reality

[Christianity Today Online, May 11, 2003]

If you can read this, you're probably not waiting in line at a movie theater. If you don't know why people might be waiting in line at a movie theater, you need to come out of that fallout shelter. Fans have been anxiously anticipating the release of The Matrix Reloaded ever since the house lights came up at the end of 1999's blockbuster, The Matrix.

The Matrix is surely the most overanalyzed movie since they invented Christian film critics.

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Anger Management, Levity

[Our Sunday Visitor, May 4, 2003]

Anger Management

Gooze-frah-bah. Feel better? That’s a phrase taken from a lullaby that Eskimo mothers use to calm their children. Or so says Dr. Buddy Rydell, anger management therapist and author of “K(no)w Buddy Cares.” In this chewy role Jack Nicholson wears a beret, goatee and an incessant grin, and oozes with know-it-all condescension. If you weren’t angry before you met him, you will be.

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Why They Hated Pinocchio

[Touchstone, April 2003]

Why They Hated “Pinocchio”

I am the sole member of a very tiny club: as far as I can tell, I am the only reviewer in America who liked Roberto Benigno’s production of “Pinocchio.” I had sat all alone in a theater, thoroughly charmed by the production, the costumes, cinematography, and performances. And I wondered why I was alone. Later I checked a website that catalogues film reviews and did a double take. This site gives films a percentage score based on the number of positive reviews; the stylish film “The Hours,” for example, was enjoying an 88% rating. The site’s editors had not found a single review of “Pinocchio” they could classify as positive. “Pinocchio” scored a zero.

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Bringing Down the House, Shanghai Knights

[Our Sunday Visitor, April 6, 2003]
Bringing Down the House

There are many ways a movie can be bad. It can be badly written, badly acted, badly filmed; it can have a bad plot, a bad premise, or a bad message. "Bringing Down the House" is bad in all these conventional ways, but then invents new ways to be bad, and sets race relations back forty years. It's the decathlon of badness.

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Gods & Generals

[Our Sunday Visitor, March 2, 2003]

What is it about the Civil War? We can’t quite get over it. It’s a story we tell ourselves over and over, never sure we’ve gotten it right.

There’s good reason for that. It’s a complex story, and the easy categories of South Bad, North Good don’t do it justice. Yet, just to demonstrate our ambivalence, it’s the South we pine for. More reenactors want to be Rebs than Yanks. No Northern gal holds the heart-place of Scarlett O’Hara. You can attribute this to romanticizing the losing side, but nobody romanticizes Hitler.

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Pinocchio, About Schmidt

[Our Sunday Visitor, January 26, 2003]

Pinocchio

I sat all alone in the theater to watch "Pinocchio". Sometimes I didn't sit but got up and stretched and walked around, or leaned against a wall taking notes. And I wondered why I was alone. This is one of the few films I've seen that deserves the description "enchanting": the sets, costumes, and cinematography are dazzling, the acting first-rate, the storyline exciting. Where were all the families--adults enjoying this as much as children?

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The Two Towers

Updated on Saturday, December 7, 2002 by Frederica

[Our Sunday Visitor, December 22, 2002]

“The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” is big. You knew that. And it’s noisy—hoo boy, with the surround-sound, it’s like being inside a washing machine. A Victorian poet hailed “ignorant armies [that] clash by night.” Now imagine that literalized, with the help of computer graphic software that creates gazillions of little critters, each programmed to pick a fight with the nearest other critter, and each given individual levels of weariness, impulsiveness, and intelligence.

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Punchdrunk Love, Tuck Everlasting

[Our Sunday Visitor, November 17, 2002]

Punchdrunk Love

A friend who caught an early screening of "Punchdrunk Love" wrote me, "Adam Sandler is wonderful." I wrote back, "Those have got to be the strangest four words in the language." But it's true. Adam Sandler is wonderful in "Punchdrunk Love." Unfortunately, the movie isn't as wonderful as he is.

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