Don’t let American, French or German film-buffs know that the Weekly has outed a movie truth: the first story-line movie was devised by Italians, which makes the scrappy little Italian movie-scene the most durable on Earth, withstanding WWII bombings, dictators… [»Read]
Robert Zemeckis’s first foray into motion capture CGI didn’t go too well with The Polar Express. The humans looked lifeless and their eyes were dead; as Simon Cowell would describe it, they were like fish on a slab. His next feature, Beowulf, was a marked… [»Read]
Creating a biopic on one of the fashion world’s biggest icons can prove troublesome, because even those who might not know who Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel was still have an inkling of what she accomplished. When she states that she will become rich from her designs, it’s… [»Read]
Fan of Ong Bak can bear one sigh of release: The sequel has once again features Tony Jaa and his incredible martial arts and acrobatics. As for the rest, the only thing Ong Bak 2 shares with its predecessor is its name. Jaa, who co-directs this installment… [»Read]
WIDE RELEASES Nine (Dec. 25) A singing, dancing Daniel Day-Lewis returns to the screen in this $50 million musical drama based on the Broadway show, which, in turn, was based on Federico Fellini’s film 8 1/2 (l963). It’s all about the meltdown… [»Read]
Like The Blair Witch Project before it, Paranormal Activity is the latest low-budget home-camcorder horror flick to arrive amidst gigabytes of Internet hype. While the scares are a smidgen obvious, the experience is still fun as theater audiences collectively… [»Read]
Director Spike Jonze has always been one of our most creatively playful contemporary filmmakers (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation). Coupled with co-screenwriter and literary wunderkind Dave Eggers, he created a version of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book… [»Read]
With a title like The Boys Are Back and a plot summary not unlike Mr. Mom, the most surprising thing about director Scott Hicks’ newest film is how it manages to avoid sitcom-stylized antics and treacly moralizing. The subject matter is shamelessly made for… [»Read]
One of the greatest appeals of a film festival that doesn’t rely on some sort of theme (be it length-based, region-centric, genre-specific or otherwise) is that each film you see is like a palate cleanser to the last. As this year’s Hawaii International Film Festival… [»Read]
The folks at the Hawaii Independent Film Festival gave us a peek at a variety of offerings this year. Here are a few more. 9500 Liberty (Tues 10/20 & Fri 10/23) Local-born Eric Byler (director of the amazing Charlotte Sometimes)… [»Read]
A surefire way to grab your audience’s attention is to break out into song. If you’re going to go that route, however, you damn well better have something to say. In After the Storm, playing Thu, 10/22 and Fri, 10/23 at Dole Cannery, there’s a lot that… [»Read]
To tell the truth, only the first third of the overrated, overstretched The Invention of Lying is above average. Once, a few years ago, in a San Francisco bookstore, I stepped back to get a better view of a floor-to-ceiling shelf, and stepped, hard, on the foot of… [»Read]
Zombies, along with vampires, are clearly the two monsters with the best cinematic subgenres. Where the latter get romanticized by people who wear too much black and spend their time espousing middle-school learned philosophy, zombie aficionados celebrate the mindless nihilism… [»Read]
Right-wingers rev up your tempers and get ready to stab at the keyboard in a tweet-rage, Michael Moore is back. This time our favorite rotund documentary-filmmaker takes on an entire ideology with Capitalism: A Love Story. The subtitle is rather obvious and that’s… [»Read]
It is minorly legendary that when Stanley Kubrick was prepping 2001: A Space Odyssey, the best sci-fi film ever made, he watched over 40 movies of that genre. Yet his masterwork does not look in the least like any one of them. Or if, in making your sci-fi debut, you… [»Read]
