Groucho Reviews
Home
Reviews
Interviews
Features
More
All Films
Theatrical
Home Video
DVD Video
Blu-Ray Video
Soundtracks
Books
Latest Film Reviews
« Previous
1
2
…
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
Next »
Stuart Little 2 (2002)
Stuart Little 2 is liable to immediately put you into a good mood. As director Rob Minkoff (The Lion King) once more pushes in on his mostly idyllic, colorful, Sesame Street-esque New York, we listen...
Stuart Little (1999)
Sunny and colorful at heart and in its eye-catching visuals, Stuart Little updates (very freely) E.B. White's book, but the tone is so guilelessly sweet and the details so smartly steered to modern c...
The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course (2002)
Steve Irwin a.k.a. The Crocodile Hunter a.k.a. Serious Yahoo came to prominence on television, hosting various incarnations of his confrontational animal-wrangling derring-do. His TV presence is, I s...
Charlotte Gray (2001)
Charlotte Gray is one of those odd-duck historical fiction films that ignores the scintillating truth and instead spins a frustrating web of simplistic half-truths. With the appropriate panache, audi...
Green Dragon (2002)
In the period surrounding the fall of Saigon in 1975, American soldiers routed waves of Vietnamese refugees into orientation camps. There, fledgling immigrants poised on an uneasy border, unsure if t...
Men in Black II (2002)
Men in Black II, unsurprisingly, lacks the joyful inventiveness of the original. Conventional wisdom dictates that sequels are not meant to be inventive; instead, they are exercises in maintenance. O...
A Walk to Remember (2002)
You may have heard that A Walk to Remember is a pleasant antidote to postmodern teen flicks and gross-out "romantic" comedies. For much of its running time, this assessment is accurate...which makes...
Elling (2002)
With a touch of the same goofy spirit that fueled Amélie, Elling tells a simple tale of simple folk who, though mentally challenged, resemble most anyone in their struggle to overcome daily fea...
Like Mike (2002)
It's tempting to give the well-acted, watchable Like Mike an innocuous two-star pass, but this kiddie fantasy relies on too-many clichés (and a dubious implicit message) in delivering its pref...
Atanarjuat: the fast runner (2002)
Zacharias Kunuk's Atanarjuat: the fast runner works on several levels. It's lyrical mythology, domestic drama, travelogue, and museum piece. In adapting a story from oral tradition dating back a few...
Notorious C.H.O. (2002)
Arguably, there's not much cinematic value to a comedy concert film, especially in a time when comedy concerts are customary cable fare. But Margaret Cho's Notorious C.H.O. makes a good case for the...
Hey Arnold! The Movie (2002)
For a kid flick, Hey Arnold! The Movie appears to endorse an awful lot of reckless, criminal behavior. It's all in good fun, I suppose (for kids, anyway). While the movie will undoubtedly please fans...
Mr. Deeds (2002)
Since Hollywood has already made Brewster's Millions about six times, Columbia Pictures decided to plunder its vaults for a fresher (but still proven) rags-to-riches premise for comedy star Adam Sand...
The Emperor's New Clothes (2002)
The Emperor's New Clothes is a star vehicle with a tricky premise. The star, Sir Ian Holm, is marvelous, and the premise isn't half bad. But neither commodity is used to its fullest potential, makin...
The Great Race (1965)
The sort of movie that beats one into submission, Blake Edwards's The Great Race hails from that bygone era when epic, big-budget comedies had "guest stars" and lavishly recreated an even more bygone...
Skin Deep (1989)
Blake Edwards's Skin Deep is that most idiosyncratic type of movie that contributes to a prominent director's ouevre without adding much distinction (except the invitation of autobiographical analysi...
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)
A seminal comedy from Hollywood's Golden Age, Mr. Deeds Goes to Washington spins a fascinating depression-era morality tale with heart and humor. The film also epitomizes its director, Frank Capra, w...
The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2002)
Peter Care's The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, based on Chris Furman's posthumously published 1994 cult novel, captures youthful disaffection and the yearning to fill the emotional void which opens...
Lilo and Stitch (2002)
Bill Watterson's immortal Calvin and Hobbes comic strip seemed to validate the suspect term "instant classic," though Watterson (unlike the Disney corporation) was not the type to capitalize on the p...
Sunshine State (2002)
John Sayles is an edgy auteur--literally. His films are frequently "border films," taking him around the edges of the U.S.: New York and Jersey in The Brother from Another Planet and City of Hope, Al...
Windtalkers (2002)
More an exercise than a fully-realized film, Windtalkers is nevertheless a perversely funny inversion of a history of American war movies and, for that matter, the B-grade Westerns of yesteryear. It'...
Les Destinées Sentimentales (2002)
Olivier Assayas's period piece Les Destinées Sentimentales--promoted in the U.S. simply as Les Destinées--represents a departure for the director. Like his wayfaring protagonist, Assaya...
The Believer (2002)
In Woody Allen's 1977 classic Annie Hall, Allen's thinly veiled alter-ego Alvy Singer steps into his own childhood memory of a family dinner and uses his more articulate and jaded elder perspective t...
Cherish (2002)
Finn Taylor's Cherish is a little too lazy to make good on its ambitions, but it's an inoffensive entertainment designed, like the pursuits of its characters, as a vicarious escape from life's drudge...
Maryam (2002)
Like Kandahar, the film Maryam got an unexpected post-9/11 windfall. A film that might otherwise have been a blip on the cultural map got a cheerleader in Roger Ebert and found its way into a surpris...
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002)
By way of preface, I should say that, though I am a man and I recognize that Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood is not designed for me, I also recognize its value as popular entertainment. Men ar...
Panic Room (2002)
Director David Fincher is a supreme technician, and he has a sensibility (a slum of suffering, with a back door of hope). But his ability to develop the right material remains in question. Panic Room...
Wild Man Blues (1997)
Despite protestations to the contrary, Woody Allen has always betrayed autobiography in his films. Of course, Allen isn't telling his own life story in any literal sense, but his movies are a psycho...
Spider-Man (2002)
Zesty and essentially true to its source,
Spider-Man
does the job.
Undercover Brother (2002)
Undercover Brother--Malcolm D. Lee's blaxploitation spoof--may not be wholly original and it's definitely not politically correct. But it is fast and funny, which qualifies it as sterling summer ente...
Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (2002)
Writer-director Jill Sprecher took the long road to her latest film. It started with a severe head injury, the result of a New York mugging. It continued with the loss of backers and her own apartmen...
Dogtown and Z-Boys (2002)
It's easy to relate to Stacey Peralta's Dogtown and Z-Boys, a documentary chronicling the birth of skateboarding as a hobby, sport, and phenomenon. Like any average Joe at a high school reunion, tell...
Swimming With Sharks (1995)
Swimming with Sharks brings to mind a host of Hollywood satires which have come before, perhaps especially David Mamet's play Speed-the-Plow in its sick, Tinseltown triangle of self-centered lovers a...
The New Guy (2002)
In an apparent effort to get all the business there is to be had at the movies, Columbia offers us a teen comedy for the Spider-Man run-off crowd. But The New Guy is strictly theater filler, whose on...
The Cat's Meow (2002)
More an embarrassing therapy session for Peter Bogdanovich than a fulfilled film, The Cat's Meow gives the director the unusual opportunity to both skewer and identify with the enemy of his friend. F...
The Deep End (2001)
The Deep End may not be deep, per se, but it touches surprising chords nevertheless. The second film from San Francisco writer-directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel (after 1994's Suture), The Dee...
Crossroads (2002)
In the early months of the year, the Hollywood crap parade flaunts fantasy, even in supposedly realistic settings. Britney Spears' debut as film star, Crossroads, spins a tale that has the feel of m...
Slackers (2002)
Mr. Nicks:I've reviewed your independent study materials and found them sorely lacking. Based on the promise you display, you should be ashamed of the shoddy work you have submitted here.First, let...
Lantana (2001)
First, the camera pushes in, into thick underbrush of lantana, revealing an unknown woman's body. For the next two hours, the film, in effect, slowly pulls back to reveal greater perspective and tru...
I Am Sam (2001)
An actor's performance as a mentally-challenged character can come off as a stunt designed for Oscar attention more than a role in service of a compelling story, and Sean Penn in I Am Sam skirts dang...
« Previous
1
2
…
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
Next »