AltWeeklies Wire
Derailed
Though it may take a few years and many movies to wash the Rachel out of Aniston's hair, her turn in Derailed is a good Good Girl-ish step.
Washington City Paper |
Tricia Olszewski |
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
Dying for Undying Fame
If the theme of Jarhead is killers wanting to kill, the theme of Paradise Now is killers wondering if they should kill.
Washington City Paper |
Louis Bayard |
11-04-2005 |
Reviews
Violence Is Golden
Sam Mendes' bleakly funny, stunningly realized Jarhead brings us a world in which violence, far from erupting, remains eternally, almost unnaturally, constrained.
Washington City Paper |
Louis Bayard |
11-04-2005 |
Reviews
Rainy-Day Man
In The Weather Man, director Gore Verbinski has achieved the impossible: making Bob Seger's Chevy-pushing "Like a Rock" poignant again (or, perhaps more accurately, for the first time).
Washington City Paper |
Tricia Olszewski |
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
Breaking Up and Down
The fourth and best film by second-generation Brooklyn boho Noah Baumbach, The Squid and the Whale is partially autobiographical, and it seems as uncensored and intimate as entries from someone's diary.
Washington City Paper |
Mark Jenkins |
11-04-2005 |
Reviews
The Legend of Zorro
The film falls flat in its seriously siesta-inducing pace.
Washington City Paper |
Mario Correa |
10-27-2005 |
Reviews
Fast-Forwarding Through Life
Writer-director Ben Younger seems to think that merely showing Rafi (Uma Thurman) and David (Bryan Greenberg) tonguing each other after each sparkless date is enough to make the audience believe in their romance.
Washington City Paper |
Tricia Olszewski |
10-27-2005 |
Reviews
Lost in Interpretation
Shopgirl, based on the novella by Steve Martin, will inevitably be viewed as Martin's Lost in Translation. But Martin, it turns out, is no Bill Murray.
Washington City Paper |
Tricia Olszewski |
10-27-2005 |
Reviews
Evocation of Madness
An immaculately art-directed plunge into bewilderment, Stay begins with a disorienting car crash that recalls the opening of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Blue.
Washington City Paper |
Mark Jenkins |
10-27-2005 |
Reviews
Unreal World
This film about a journalist's investigation of two former song-and-joke partners would have been more convincing with actors who played both sides of their characters.
Washington City Paper |
Mark Jenkins |
10-27-2005 |
Reviews
Reality Bites
Cynics have suggested that Hollywood loves no subject more than itself. And Reel Paradise proves that you don't need a big studio--or even the pretense of fiction--to make a self-important movie about movies.
Washington City Paper |
Tricia Olszewski |
10-20-2005 |
Reviews
Sugarcoated Tale
This DreamWorks production about a little girl and a special horse is slow-moving and treacly, and--unless you actually buy that bit of marketing flimflam about being "inspired by a true story"--it yields no surprises.
Washington City Paper |
Tricia Olszewski |
10-20-2005 |
Reviews
Character Deferences
Set in Minnesota's Iron Range as Anita Hill testifies against Clarence Thomas on TV, North Country is a new Warner Bros. movie in the spirit of the old. It's based on one woman miner's crusade to be treated with decency.
Washington City Paper |
Mark Jenkins |
10-20-2005 |
Reviews
