AltWeeklies Wire
Festival Charmer Graduates to Big Timenew
Indie film about teenage dork celebrates the youthful underdog.
Austin Chronicle |
Marrit Ingman |
06-24-2004 |
Reviews
Tags: Jared Hess, Napoleon Dynamite
Michael Moore Sets Off Sparksnew
Moore's agitprop is a political scorcher.
Austin Chronicle |
Marc Savlov |
06-24-2004 |
Reviews
Like Father, Like Sonnew
Melvin Van Peebles' son Mario pays tribute to his father's groundbreaking blaxploitation film Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song, and also settles a few old Oedipal scores along the way.
Austin Chronicle |
Marjorie Baumgarten |
06-24-2004 |
Reviews
Documentary Takes Respectful, Sober Look at Poet's Lifenew
The documentary gives you the itch to get reacquainted with Bukowski's work, preferably while sitting astride a barstool.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Curt Holman |
06-24-2004 |
Reviews
Waiting for Rocco at NBC's 'The Restaurant'new
NBC hyped the second season as a battle for control of Rocco's 22nd Street, but when the show ended June 5, both men still held equal stakes in the business. Unable to accept such an unsatisfying ending, we went to investigate the made-for-TV eatery for ourselves.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Heather Kuldell |
06-24-2004 |
TV
Tags: TV
Poultry, sexual awakening make for queasy brewnew
The Mudge Boy is about a sexual rite of passage with as much murky, disturbing content as stories of female sexual awakening, but Mudge's tale of chicken-fried yokels and brutal life down-on-the-farm shows a fairly conventional, crude view of rural life that never quite jibes with its art film trappings.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
06-24-2004 |
Reviews
Tags: Michael Burke, The Mudge Boy
The Notebook is a hokey bag of Southern clichesnew
Everything from set design to dialogue to historical detail in The Notebook feels fake in this adaptation of crybaby novelist Nicholas Sparks' best-selling book.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
06-24-2004 |
Reviews
Tags: Nick Cassavetes, The Notebook
Fahrenheit challenges post-9/11 politicsnew
Addressing material that Hollywood has taken pains to avoid, Fahrenheit 9/11 lights a fire under its viewers and challenges the sacred cows of 21st-century America.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Curt Holman |
06-24-2004 |
Reviews
Tags: Michael Moore, Fahrenheit 9/11
Mario Van Peebles Follows in his Father's Footsteps With Baadasssss!new
Three decades after Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song became an instant cult classic, Melvin's son, actor and director Mario Van Peebles (New Jack City, Posse), has made a tribute and expose of the long road to making Sweet called Baadasssss!.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
06-23-2004 |
Profiles & Interviews
Tags: Baadasssss!, Mario Van Peebles
Moore of the Same, But Less Convincingnew
You can share Moore’s every political sentiment in the movie yet fail to be persuaded by his logic. It’s all associative, an argument by induction and inference. All the cheap shots and easy cuts—Iraqis bleed, Bush smirks—fail to make a coherent case.
Seattle Weekly |
Brian Miller |
06-23-2004 |
Reviews
Tags: Michael Moore, Fahrenheit 9/11
Dodgeball Dazzles Dimly
Sloppy, shoddily constructed, so limp at times that a year’s supply of Viagra couldn’t stiffen it up, the movie plays like a season’s worth of America’s Funniest Home Videos as hosted by an aggro, way-macho Ben Stiller character.
Birmingham Weekly |
Scot Lockman |
06-21-2004 |
Reviews
Will Smooth Flight Prove Audience Delight?
Steven Spielberg enters his Capra period with this optimistic melting-pot tale starring pal Tom Hanks, whose underused comic instincts come to the fore.
Austin Chronicle |
Marjorie Baumgarten |
06-21-2004 |
Reviews
Tags: Steven Spielberg, The Terminal
"Before Sunset" Shows the Sorrow of the Road Not Taken
The sequel to "Before Sunrise" finds a beautiful romantic memory re-cast as a tragic shadow.
Salt Lake City Weekly |
Scott Renshaw |
06-21-2004 |
Reviews
Tags: Richard Linklater, Before Sunset
Russian Father Returns
A long-absent father returns to his family in this prize-winning Russian drama, and for his two young sons the unexplained reason for his return is as mysterious as his absence.
Austin Chronicle |
Marc Savlov |
06-21-2004 |
Reviews
Tags: The Return, Andrei Zvyagintsev
Duck, You Suckers
In this goofy and lowbrow Vince Vaughn/Ben Stiller comedy, the good guys are lovable losers and the bad guys have frosted feathered hair and unitards with inflatable codpieces.
Austin Chronicle |
Marrit Ingman |
06-21-2004 |
Reviews
