Groucho Reviews
Home
Reviews
Interviews
Features
More
All Films
Theatrical
Home Video
DVD Video
Blu-Ray Video
Soundtracks
Books
Latest Theatrical Reviews
« Previous
1
2
…
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
Next »
Mies vailla menneisyyttä (The Man Without a Past) (2003)
Aki Kaurismäki's much-awarded The Man Without a Past (2002 Grand Jury Prize winner at Cannes) will certainly be too drily quirky for some tastes, but it is a comedy for grown-ups, and for that w...
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World--based on the 20-novel naval adventure series by Patrick O'Brian--plays to director Peter Weir's strengths. The man who made Gallipoli and The Mosquito...
The Magdalene Sisters (2003)
Peter Mullan's The Magdalene Sisters is a scathing indictment of the sins of the Sisters of Magdalene Order, and by extension, all unholy acts ever committed in the name of religion. In one of the fi...
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
Peter Jackson opens The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King with the regarding of a worm. Pulling back and racking focus, Jackson reveals a hook. With the final part of a what amounts to a singl...
Lost in Translation (2003)
Barking up the right tree, our favorite hangdog is back. The one-of-a-kind Bill Murray, the charm-oozing, heavy-lidded king of bemused deadpan, seems only to improve with age. Under the preternatural...
The Last Samurai (2003)
I don't know what I wanted from a movie called The Last Samurai starring Tom Cruise. Maybe I just wanted it not to exist. But it does. It exists and exists and exists. Director Edward Zwick has made...
In America (2003)
By all rights, Jim Sheridan's In America--the fictionalized version of Sheridan's own immigration with his family in the 1980s--should be branded with a scarlet "S" for sappy, but somehow the man get...
Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003)
When Girl With a Pearl Earring opens, the titular heroine is peeling an onion. In its appropriate but somewhat obvious application, the image represents the film, but novice filmmaker Peter Webber ma...
In the Cut (2003)
The revitalization of traditional genre films requires the touch of an accomplished artist. With her new film In the Cut, Jane Campion lends her distinctive voice to the mystery-thriller, creating a...
Japón (2003)
The protagonist of Carlos Reygadas's Japón quietly embodies the punchline to the old joke Woody Allen quotes--as a metaphor for life--in Annie Hall: "Two elderly women are at a Catskill Mounta...
Northfork (2003)
I've come to accept what some people see in Northfork, but as the credits rolled, you couldn't have convinced me that anyone anywhere would ever really want to watch it. Sanity returned, as I remembe...
Amores Perros (2000)
Amores Perros (Love's a Bitch) was the International Critics' Week Grand Prize Winner at Cannes, the twice-screened, twice sold-out closing night showcase for Cinequest, and Mexico's nominee for Best...
American Splendor (2003)
When Sam Raimi brought Spider-Man, at long last, to the big screen, he brought with it that character's lower-middle-class roots. Marvel Comics maven Stan Lee, like Raimi, knew that readers might enj...
Spider (2002)
David Cronenberg's Spider begins with a credit sequence of paint-peeling images suggesting a Rorshach test, followed by a prolonged, unsettling tracking shot the once and future Master of Suspense su...
Bad Company (2002)
Where to begin describing Bad Company? From producer Jerry Bruckheimer's Office of Demographics comes, ostensibly, another well-reasoned packaging of a star twosome (typically, a white man and a blac...
Billy Elliot (2000)
Following on the heels of British stage director Sam Mendes (now an Oscar-winning film director of American Beauty), British stage director Stephen Daldry offers up his debut feature Billy Elliot, an...
Angela's Ashes (1999)
Alan Parker's reverent adaptation of Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes is likely to please devotees of the Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller. Those few who haven't yet read the book, however, may wonder...
The Apostle (1997)
It is a rare film in today's climate which transcends mood and achieves spirit. Robert Duvall-- as writer, director and star-- has fashioned such a film, The Apostle, and he has been rewarded with an...
The Straight Story (1999)
The Straight Story, taken on its own merits, is an amiable enough drama made by a filmmaker of rare skill. But, given that the director is David Lynch, the film's modest creative returns are cause f...
Before Night Falls (2000)
Julian Schnabel, once a painter and now a film director, has made significant strides as a filmmaker in the four years since Basquiat. For that film, a biopic of painter Jean Michel Basquiat, Schnabel...
Bound (1996)
When Hollywood releases a film about two lesbians, one must at the very least sit up and take notice. The thriller Bound is certainly a strange creature, and rarely boring.This is the directorial deb...
Dancemaker (1998)
Though the dances themselves are sometimes histrionically shot or overedited, Diamond ultimately succeeds in putting Taylor's best foot forward in this wholly memorable film.
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
Perhaps a comparison of 1994's Jurassic Park to its new sequel, The Lost World, would be a splitting of hairs. The strengths and weaknesses of each produce a balanced effect. The first film had the n...
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997)
Clint Eastwood's film of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil shares with its bestselling source material a wealth of history, and an inherent confusion of fact and fiction. Eastwood lays an under...
Rear Window (1954)
Alfred Hitchcock's classic Rear Window is perhaps Hitch's most purely perfect film. It packs in the popcorn thrills, a great Jimmy Stewart performance, and a subtle internal deconstruction of the fil...
Sleepy Hollow (1999)
Tim Burton has proven his enormous talent as a filmmaker with the strikingly, cartoony, horrific, skewed, and often silly images which populate his universe. But for a filmmaker with such an attracti...
Sling Blade (1996)
A young boy helps an outcast protagonist find a place in the world and a fresh opportunity for a meaningful life. It's the plot of many a film, including Sling Blade, by writer-director-star-Oscar ba...
The Claim (2000)
The words that often strike dread into the hearts of literature lovers are "Inspired by." After all, films that are "based on" books often bear little enough resemblance to their sources. But "inspire...
Bedrooms and Hallways (1998)
While modest in means, Bedrooms and Hallways is a terribly clever comedy of manners conspiring to blur the lines of sexual orientation. Director Rose Troche (Go Fish) runs with Robert Farrar's invent...
The Closet (2001)
Le Placard (The Closet) is a typically high-concept French farce--of exactly the type that Hollywood regularly cannibalizes for English-language remakes. In this case, that might not be such a bad i...
The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001)
After a prolonged bout of flailing and despite being an original Woody Allen confection, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion falls, finally, flat. One of Allen's nouveau lightweight comedies, Scorpion tak...
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)
Despite sometimes lamenting the output, film fans have been offered a pretty good variety of quality films touching on the gay and lesbian experience. Highlighting that point is the arrival of a new...
Hearts in Atlantis (2001)
Coming out of a dismal movie summer, the first taste of fall is like manna from heaven—in contrast, that is. Directed by Scott Hicks (Shine), adapted by William Goldman, and starring Anthony Ho...
Bridget Jones's Diary (2001)
Jane Austen-philes may get a larf out of Bridget Jones's Diary, the new film "based on" Helen Fielding's hit novel. The film is helmed by Sharon Maguire, who modelled one of Fielding's FOBs (friends...
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001)
On the Hollywood scene, Steven Spielberg's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence has already been branded a failure where it really counts: at the box office. Such woes seem inevitable for a film that awkwar...
Cold Mountain (2003)
Romantic with a capital "R," Anthony Minghella's filmed take on Charles Frazier's bestselling Cold Mountain has pictorial heft to spare but is slow to engage through character. It seems all too easy...
House of Sand and Fog (2003)
The history of the world comes down to real estate: "highway robbery," coercive deals, conquering, planting flags, squatting. In various Holy Lands, men and women fight tooth and nail for what they b...
Big Fish (2003)
As usual, Tim Burton's latest film is abundant in storytelling piquancy and deficient in storytelling proficiency. I love-hate Burton for his superior visual style and narrative blockheadedness--his...
Peter Pan (2003)
In the 101 years since Peter Pan's first, cameo appearance in a J.M. Barrie novel, no live-action sound feature has been made which, simply, tells the tale of Peter Pan. While a 1924 silent version h...
Thirteen (2003)
In her best-selling social tract Reviving Ophelia, Mary Pipher asserts that "Parents know only too well that something is happening to their daughters. Calm, considerate daughters grow moody, demandi...
« Previous
1
2
…
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
Next »