AltWeeklies Wire
'Borat' Director Debunks Religion with Bill Maher in 'Religulous'
Bill Maher takes a shooting-fish-in-a-barrel approach to questioning the validity of all religious beliefs and comes up with a cinematic breath of fresh air.
Gen Z Goes Underground and Falls in Love
A romantic love letter to New York's downtown music scene, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist finds New Jersey high school senior Nick (Michael Cera) attending to a bruised heart by making volumes of compilation CDs for his snooty ex-girlfriend Tris (Alexis Dziena).
'Miracle at St. Anna' Shows War Isn't the Genre for Spike Lee

Spike Lee boxes outside of his directorial weight-class with a war story bogged down by ham-handed smacks of magical realism and over-pronounced examples of racial prejudice.
'Elite Squad' Examines Brazil's Special Police
After the humane tenor of writer/director Jose Padilha's insightful documentary Bus 174 (2002), it's surprising that the filmmaker's follow-up in an all-out, right-wing exploitation movie about Rio de Janeiro's brutal BOPE (Special Police Operations Battalion) squad of assassins that view all social strata of Brazilians as human detritus.
Tags: Elite Squad, Jose Padilha
'Choke': Against the Mainstream
In adapting Chuck Palahnuik's novel of sexual addiction, con artistry, and subjugated maturity screenwriter/director/actor Clark Gregg creates a fantastical brand of satire that is engaging as it is diabolically ribald.
Tags: Choke, Clark Gregg
Expect a Different Kind of Happy Ending in 'Year of the Fish'
Year of the Fish is a tawdry tale about a Chinese immigrant girl sold into Manhattan massage parlor servitude.
Tags: David Kaplan, Year of the Fish
'Humboldt County': In Pot He Trusts
Peter (Jeremy Strong) is a repressed UCLA med student who finds his inner voice after spending time in the nurturing company of some Northern California pot farmers in an inspired independent comic drama filled with nuanced performances and delicate narrative touches.
Spike Lee Tries is His Hand at War in 'Miracle at St. Anna'
Lee boxes outside of his directorial weight-class with a war story bogged down with ham-handed smacks of magical realism and over-pronounced examples of racial prejudice.
Tags: Spike Lee, Miracle at St. Anna
'Obscene': The Rise and Fall of Barney Rosset
Debut filmmakers Neil Ortenberg and Daniel O'Connor tell the dynamic story of Rosset's iconic rise and fall as the owner of Grove Press and Evergreen Review, responsible for publishing such 20th century literary icons as Allen Ginsberg, Samuel Beckett, Henry Miller, William S. Burroughs, Malcolm X, and Jack Kerouac.
'Battle In Seattle' Examines the WTO
A searing fictionalized telling of America's most recently effective public protest at 1999's WTO convention in Seattle, writer/director Stuart Townsend's debut feature makes a point of tracing the WTO's global stranglehold to its post WWII roots.
Tags: Stuart Townsend, Battle In Seattle
Avoid 'Towelhead'
As its openly racist title implies Towelhead is an exploitation movie that wears its shock value on its guilty sleeve.
'Mister Foe' Tries to Come of Age
Quirky for its own sake, Mister Foe (originally titled Hallum Foe) is an opaque attempt at a coming-of-age-via-modified-incest story that follows malcontent Hallam (Jamie Bell) after the suspicious death of his mother lands another woman (Claire Forlani) in his filthy rich father's bed.
Tags: David Mackenzie, Mister Foe
'The Women' Misses the Mark
Piecemeal and earnest to a fault, this remake of George Cukor's 1939 film relies so much on the elite world of humorless, filthy rich New York women that it excludes most of its would-be target fans.
Tags: Diane English, The Women
'Burn After Reading': The Coens Serve Up Laughs
The writing/directing team of Joel and Ethan Coen create a laugh-a-minute black comedy that pokes fun at America's surveillance-dominated existence, plastic surgery desires, and all out greed.
'Igor': A Monster Mash
John Cusack is the voice of Igor, a hunchbacked laboratory assistant to the doomed mad scientist Dr. Glickenstein (voiced by John Cleese) in this irresistible feel-good animated comedy that's rooted in early monster movie classics.