AltWeeklies Wire
The Guy's Chick Flicknew
This Alfie feels like Bridget Jones with a sex change or "Sex and the City" from the guy's perspective. According to chick flick formula, Alfie's Englishman chauffeur in New York learns various life lessons as he progresses from a playa seducing every woman in sight to a vulnerable charmer who's been schooled and chastened by all the girls he's loved before.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
11-04-2004 |
Reviews
Tags: Alfie, Charles Shyer
Reconstruction Guided by Faith in and a Skepticism of Fatenew
Christoffer Boe's impressive first feature gives an analytical cast to ideas of our destiny and in the process forces us to question why we want so desperately to believe in stories like Aimee and Alex's
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
10-28-2004 |
Reviews
Tags: Christoffer Boe, Reconstruction
Implausible Story Reaps Ill-Conceived Birthnew
Co-written by one-time Luis Buñuel collaborator Jean-Claude Carriére, Birth aims for the somnambulist surreality and social critique of Belle de Jour or Diary of a Chambermaid, but achieves only spookiness for spookiness' sake.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
10-28-2004 |
Reviews
Tags: birth, Jonathan Glazer
The Man Behind Bushnew
Contrary to White House spin, the man behind Dubya is not God, but Bush's key political adviser, Rove, lurking like Forrest Gump over Bush's shoulder.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
10-21-2004 |
Reviews
Filmmaker's Latest Doc Examines Bitter Hometown Harvestnew
The navel-gazing detective story finds McElwee traveling home again to sort fact from fiction in the family drama of a great-grandfather who created Bull Durham tobacco but lost his entire fortune to business rival James Duke, thus reducing the McElwee family name to a butt in history's ashtray.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
10-21-2004 |
Reviews
Tags: Bright Leaves, Ross McElwee
The Yes Men Explore the Art of the Pranknew
The whole Yes Men concept is like some brilliant slacker notion hatched between tokes on a mega-bong. But in this case, the idea moves beyond the couch, into the very bosom of the media -- Harpers, Fortune, The New York Times -- that documents their WTO prankery.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
10-14-2004 |
Reviews
Rock 'n' Roll Dreams Die Hard in Ramones Documentarynew
End of the Century is a rightfully grim, fan's-eye view of the Ramones. The film's first half suffers, kinetically speaking, from a lack of footage of early gigs. By the second half, the band has gained enough notoriety to merit film footage.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
10-14-2004 |
Reviews
Documentary Examines Gay Marriage Debatenew
Largely traditional in form, this documentary is at its most persuasive when director Jim de Seve focuses on real people whose lives are dramatically affected by the gay marriage debate.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
10-07-2004 |
Reviews
Tags: Jim de Sève, Tying the Knot
Portrait of a Revolutionary as a Young Mannew
The journey as metaphor is a familiar one, charted in legends from the Odyssey to Easy Rider. Along the way, we know the youths will have their eyes opened, their hearts broken or, in the more cynical road movies, wind up dead.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
09-30-2004 |
Reviews
Film's Resemblance to Video Game is Uncannynew
Nicotina is a heist film so bland and uninspired, the filmmakers give up almost immediately on the details of its conventional deal-gone-haywire plot, focusing instead on tangential storylines and characters.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
09-23-2004 |
Reviews
Tags: Hugo Rodriguez, Nicotina
Director Needs to Grow Up Alreadynew
Some milestone has surely been marked when the latest John Waters film doesn't shock so much as make you wish the director would grow up already. At 58, Waters is still fixated on the kind of bathroom humor and sexual material that seems puerile.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
09-23-2004 |
Reviews
Tags: John Waters, A Dirty Shame
Film Creates Atmosphere of Gnawing, Unrelenting Tensionnew
With the possible exception of Spike Lee's 25th Hour, no recent film has distilled the post-Sept. 11 sense of anxiety and dread better than iconoclastic Austrian director Michael Haneke's The Time of the Wolf, a gripping, brilliantly conceived post-apocalyptic drama.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
09-23-2004 |
Reviews
Gallo Uses Style as a Distraction From Lack of Originalitynew
All of the negative hype and reports of boos from audiences at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival prove to be legitimate responses to Vincent Gallo's masturbatory opus, The Brown Bunny.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
09-09-2004 |
Reviews
Tags: The Brown Bunny, Vincent Gallo
Two Danish Filmmakers Make Art Out of Playnew
Von Trier asked Leth to remake his 1967 short The Perfect Human five times according to von Trier's exacting specifications. The resulting documentary is the ambitious and at times flawed The Five Obstructions, in which Leth and his films are analyzed, scrutinized and cut to pieces by von Trier.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
09-09-2004 |
Reviews
First-Time Director Gets Stuck in a Genre Whirlpoolnew
Mean Creek feels like a supremely milquetoast film made not out of passion, but out of some assurance that a tight screenplay with all the characters' motives and artsy cinematography stacked domino-neatly in a row guarantees success. But as any game player knows, orderly dominoes are made to tumble.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
09-02-2004 |
Reviews
Tags: Mean Creek, Jacob Aaron Estes
