Apr
07
Someday My Steer Will Come? In BLANCANIEVES, Spanish director Pablo Berger takes the classic tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, sets it in Seville in the 1920’s and recasts it as the tale of an orphaned daughter of an illustrious toreador who, despite the machinations of a wicked stepmother and with the help …
Feb
18
The TWILIGHTing of romantic fantasy continues apace. In WARM BODIES a few weeks ago, director Jonathan Levine managed to take the human teen/inhuman teen (in this case, a zombie) romance and grace it with humor and genuine emotion; in the upcoming THE HOST, Andrew Niccol tackles TWILIGHT mistress Stephanie Meyer’s take on INVASION OF THE …
Feb
11
Next vacation, break away to beautiful Bodega Bay, CA, where the welcome is warm, the sun is shining, and the gulls want to peck your eyes out. Don’t order the fried chicken. With no new genre release in the theaters, the Spotlight gang takes a fiftieth anniversary look at Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 classic of nature …
Feb
10
Turns out the will of the people rather closely resembles that of the Pepsi Generation. In 1988, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was forced to stage a plebiscite on his administration, allowing his subjects to vote YES or NO on continuing his rule for another eight years. When Pinochet briefly opens up the television airwaves to …
Dec
07
In such series as FARSCAPE and STARGATE SG-1, Ben Browder traveled to distant universes filled with strange and fascinating creatures. But in all their adventures, neither FARSCAPE’s John Crichton nor SG-1’s Cameron Mitchell ever had to contend with an environment as daunting as high school, or a life form as enigmatic as teenagers. That’s just …
Nov
26
With THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, Disney succeeded in extending the holiday film season from the beginning of November to the end of the year. Now, DreamWorks has upped the ante with RISE OF THE GUARDIANS, a CG animated, 3D fantasy that not only has a burly, Slavic Santa (Alec Baldwin) heading up a team of …
Oct
29
Who knew that a movie based on an “unfilmable” literary property with a complex story structure — even with an all-star cast — could be this dynamic, this moving, this, yes, fun? CLOUD ATLAS encompasses stories spanning five-hundred years — going all the way from the historical tale of a young traveler (Jim Sturgess) enduring …
Oct
26
Released at a time when America’s faith in journalism was undergoing serious turmoil, George Clooney’s drama GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK was a stirring reminder of the importance of the institution. Focusing on TV newsman Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) and his producer, Fred Friendly (Clooney), and the risks they took in turning their spotlight …
Sep
03
You were at the beach. You were visiting relatives. You had friends over for one, last barbecue. You were scrubbing down the altar for the midnight sacrifice to the Great Old Ones (special for Providence only). Whatever you were doing, it was something you felt was more important than being in the theater this past …
Aug
02
NUIT #1 begins with its main characters, Clara (Catherine de Léan) and Nikolai (Dimitri Storoge), engaged in a superficial but strenuous bout of sex, having just met each other at a rave and retreated to Nikolai’s sparsely appointed apartment. But, using the sheer shallowness of that physical coupling as a springboard, director Anne Émond delves …
