AltWeeklies Wire
'Burb Your Enthusiasm
This is the second movie in two months from the Weinstein Company to pack the same essential message: There comes a time when the innocent suburbanite must learn how to kill.
Washington City Paper |
Mark Jenkins |
01-06-2006 |
Reviews
Mission Unconscionable
Of the directors who transformed Hollywood in the '70s, Steven Spielberg has made both the most successful and the most simplistic movies. At this point, the last thing anyone could have reasonably expected from him is a film that's not only serious but also complex.
Washington City Paper |
Mark Jenkins |
12-23-2005 |
Reviews
Beyond Xanadu
The Keeper is earnest and likable, if a bit too stolid for anyone without a pre-existing interest in the subject.
Washington City Paper |
Mark Jenkins |
12-19-2005 |
Reviews
Pronounced Dead
Like The Last Samurai, Memoirs of a Geisha is a well-researched, if misguided, tribute to Japan's bad old days of patriarchy and strict social hierarchy.
Washington City Paper |
Mark Jenkins |
12-19-2005 |
Reviews
Imperial Witnesses
To those who don't remember the Vietnam War, Winter Soldier may seem antique. Yet anyone who's been paying attention to the occupation of Iraq will recognize certain mind-sets, tactics, and weapons.
Washington City Paper |
Mark Jenkins |
12-09-2005 |
Reviews
Pseudo Arabia
Written and directed by Stephen Gaghan, who scripted Steven Soderbergh's structurally kindred Traffic, the intriguing but finally unsatisfying Syriana is the latest product of the Clooney-Soderbergh salutary-cinema factory.
Washington City Paper |
Mark Jenkins |
12-09-2005 |
Reviews
Spirits of Place
An art-house hit upon its original release 30 years ago, the film is the third of Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni's Anglo-American features. All three place a sociopolitical frame around the director's worldview.
Washington City Paper |
Mark Jenkins |
12-02-2005 |
Reviews
Psychic Territory
One subculture of America's rec-room repertory theaters supports Asian horror and revenge flicks that Hollywood sees mostly as grist for remakes, including the work of Kiyoshi Kurosawa, perhaps the most ambitious of J-horror directors.
Washington City Paper |
Mark Jenkins |
12-02-2005 |
Reviews
Children of the Revelation
Machuca attempts to muffle any potential backlash by taking a boy's-eye view of American-backed state terrorism.
Washington City Paper |
Mark Jenkins |
11-18-2005 |
Reviews
Metaphysical Obsessions
Bee Season mucks around in stuff that no mainstream American entertainment--save, perhaps, the last few Madonna albums--has ever explored.
Washington City Paper |
Mark Jenkins |
11-18-2005 |
Reviews
Protocols of Zion
This is a rambling and inconclusive but intermittently incisive tour of neo-Nazis, radical Muslims, and other conspiracy-inclined types.
Washington City Paper |
Mark Jenkins |
11-11-2005 |
Reviews
Aw, Shoot
For all its absurd complications, the plot of this film is ultimately unsurprising and not all that interesting.
Washington City Paper |
Mark Jenkins |
11-10-2005 |
Reviews
Outsider Drama
Turning his multiplatinum Get Rich or Die Tryin' into a movie is a logical way for 50 Cent to expand his franchise, but that doesn't guarantee he can enlarge his abilities along with it.
Washington City Paper |
Mark Jenkins |
11-10-2005 |
Reviews
After Innocence
People convicted of murder or rape and then cleared by DNA evidence often remain incarcerated, as authorities desperately try to convince judges that they got the right guy, or even that blameless men should remain behind bars on procedural grounds.
Washington City Paper |
Mark Jenkins |
11-04-2005 |
Reviews
Scarred Lives
The directorial debut of playwright and screenwriter Craig Lucas, The Dying Gaul is a slick, Hollywood-style vehicle powered by anti-establishment anger.
Washington City Paper |
Mark Jenkins |
11-04-2005 |
Reviews
