Word: film
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Neil Burger; rated R; out now Back from Iraq, three soldiers--a career Army man (Tim Robbins), a cute hillbilly (Rachel McAdams) and a guy made impotent by shrapnel (Michael Peņa)--take the life lessons all road movies must provide. Each plot turn is predictable, but this awful film still has secrets: Why was it made? Why is it played as comedy? And who'd benefit from seeing...
Earlier this year, Spike Lee picked a fight with Clint Eastwood over the lack of black soldiers in Eastwood's Iwo Jima films Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. Clint opined that "a guy like that should shut his face"; Spike replied, "The man is not my father, and we're not on a plantation either." No doubt that Lee was voicing a social grievance, but he was also tub-thumping some early publicity for his own WW II film - the one with the John Wayne clip and the typically smoldering Spike Lee quip...
With 20 features since his 1986 debut She's Gotta Have It, plus music videos, excellent documentaries like 4 Little Girls and When the Levees Broke and, not least, his Nike commercials with Michael Jordan, Lee is more than just film history's leading black director. He has raised racial awareness, and hackles, while establishing a powerful brand name: Spike Lee. From the incendiary Do the Right Thing in 1989 to his box-office hit Inside Man two years ago, Lee has fashioned an ornery, instantly recognizable personality that stamps his films, his clothing line and his public statements...
...York City postal worker, standing behind his caged-in window at the post office. When a man approaches and asks for a stamp, Negron shoots him dead with a German Luger. Later, in Negron's apartment, police discover the head of a priceless statue. The rest of the film, a flashback to Italy in 1944, explains how Negron got the statue and why he executed the stranger...
...Anna, Lee and McBride have laid on so many miracles, the moviegoer runs out of patience. The film goes for broke and in the process breaks. It's too much and not enough. One could find a perfectly good movie, of normal length, by watching St. Anna on DVD and skipping the awful chapters to focus on the terrific ones...