AltWeeklies Wire
Woman, Thou Art Loosed Preached to Audience, Literallynew
Bishop T.D. Jakes plays himself in the film version and frequently shows off his rolling oratory. Woman features a strong spiritual message and a genuine concern for the social problems that lead women to crime, but its script seldom integrates the two.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Curt Holman |
10-07-2004 |
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
Peppy Pieces of Propaganda Viable at Box Officenew
As Election Day draws near, going to the movies feels increasingly like switching on infomercials, and they're all selling the same thing: regime change in the White House.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Curt Holman |
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
Fry's Film Shines With Social Satirenew
His experiences prepped Fry for writing and directing the satiric social X-ray of London's glitterati in the 1930s. He takes some liberties with Evelyn Waugh's second novel, but he lives up to the book's precise comic timing and scalding satire.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Curt Holman |
09-23-2004 |
Reviews
Tags: Bright Young Things, Stephen Fry
English Comedy-Thriller Reanimates Zombie Genrenew
While drawn-out sieges prove a mainstay of the zombie genre, this film builds to moments of anguished intensity that play against the deadpan comedy that came before. Wright and his actors handle the heavy dramatics better than you'd expect.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Curt Holman |
09-23-2004 |
Reviews
Tags: Edgar Wright, Shaun of the Dead
Sky Captain Needs Work on Charactersnew
The soft-focus, Technicolor-inspired footage offers an incredibly lush fantasy world, but filmmakers fell into the Star Wars prequel trap by paying so much attention to the digital effects that they forgot to work on the slow-moving story and undeveloped characters.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Heather Kuldell |
09-15-2004 |
Reviews
Ju-on Marks Turning Point for Japanese Horrornew
Technically, this is Shimizu's third theatrical feature in a franchise begun with a made-for-TV film called Ju-on: The Curse. That might explain Shimizu's fiendish resistance to lay out the film's supernatural rules. The audience stays as off-balance as the characters.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Curt Holman |
09-15-2004 |
Reviews
Tags: Takashi Shimizu, Ju-on: The Grudge
First-Time Director Lance Rivera Never Finds the Laid-Back Tonenew
Too often The Cookout leaves comic opportunities half-baked while smothering the audience in flavorless homilies about family values.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Curt Holman |
09-09-2004 |
Reviews
Tags: Lance Rivera, The Cookout
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
Philosophical Documentary is About Everything and Nothingnew
If you yawned at the high-tech action scenes of the Matrix movies but loved all the verbiage about the nature of reality, feed your head with What the #$*! Do We Know!?
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Curt Holman |
09-09-2004 |
Reviews
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
