The Master
As Anderson's highly anticipated followup to There Will Be Blood, The Master's reputation precedes it, since it had been reported that the film was a dramatization of the early days of Scientology and its leader L. Ron Hubbard. In fact the titular "Master" – one Lancaster Dodd (Anderson regular Philip Seymour Hoffman) – is obviously modeled on Hubbard, and certain… read more!
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
Thoroughly engaging sea yarn based on the novels by the late Patrick O'Brian (the script is adapted from two separate books, Master and Commander and The Far Side of the World, hence the unwieldy title), about the crew of the H.M.S. Surprise, a British naval ship fighting the French in 1805, at the height of the Napoleonic Wars. Much more… read more!
The Matador
Amusing if minor comedy about a sleazy hitman (Pierce Brosnan) who's losing his touch, and the naive yuppie (Greg Kinnear) he befriends in Mexico City and lures into his cockeyed world. A story sort of emerges where each man, at some point in time, needs the other's help to get through a sticky situation, but really this movie is enjoyable… read more!
Match Point
Regardless of our undying puritanical ire over Woody Allen running off with his ex's adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn (they've now been happily married for over eight years, so the joke's on us), Americans have a funny relationship with Allen: All the US critics are hailing Match Point as his best work in years - a thoughtful, non-gimmicky return to his… read more!
The Matrix
Brand new science fiction, written for the screen, and made by a pair of comparatively unknown writer/directors (the Wachowskis' only previous effort was the decent, but hardly revelatory, low budget crime thriller Bound), starring Keanu Reeves of all people - yet it works. It works because the Wachowskis have such a confident vision, with special effects that stretch the limits… read more!
The Matrix Reloaded
When The Matrix first came out in theatres in 1999, I saw it right away and walked out thinking, "Eh, I guess it was all right." Truth is, I didn't quite get it. I guess I was so lost in the flow of information that I didn't actually take the time to piece together just what it was about. So… read more!
The Matrix Resurrections
The Matrix blew everyone away when it was released in 1999. Its makers, then billed as the Wachowski Brothers, had only one previous feature under their belt – the clever indie thriller Bound – yet their confidence in unspooling an original, mind-bending sci fi blockbuster was stunning. As the years go by, it appears more and more as though The… read more!
The Matrix Revolutions
The most interesting thing I can tell you about The Matrix Revolutions is that I heard a rumor that co-creator Larry Wachowski is planning to have a sex change. Anyway, Revolutions picks up where The Matrix Reloaded leaves off, almost to the second, but if you missed the previous outing then I imagine you'd have no interest in hearing about… read more!
May
Another in a recent trend of low-budget, character-based chillers that have run the gamut from Willard to Dahmer, first-time writer/director McKee's May is a predictable movie about a disturbed young woman (Angela Bettis) whose obsessions with cutting, sewing, and the human body reach an inevitable convergence after she is spurned by a local hunk (Six Feet Under's Jeremy Sisto). Though… read more!
Mayor of the Sunset Strip
So far the most thoroughly entertaining new movie I've seen this year. This is a surprisingly intimate documentary about Rodney Bingenheimer, a gnomish, middle-aged fellow who, after spending his childhood as the neighborhood geek in Mountain View, California, took off for Hollywood in the '60s and became a central fixture of the LA music scene. Over the next four decades,… read more!
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Outside of Barbra Streisand, who hasn't made a movie in years, I can't name any female writer/director/stars currently working in America. Can you? So I was anxious that multidisciplinary artist Miranda July's debut feature – starring herself as a struggling multidisciplinary artist – wouldn't just be a vanity project. Thankfully, there's so much happening in this film that I easily let go of… read more!
Me, Myself & Irene
Another one of those flicks I caught a few months late at the cheap theatre. Not being a big fan of Jim Carrey's physical antics, you can imagine I felt pretty strapped for entertainment during these, the really dead days of summer cinema. That said, I found myself sort of digging Me, Myself & Irene. Here Carrey's runaway mugging is… read more!
Mean Girls
It's funny: when notable directors are at work, reviewers (myself among them) always refer to them as the true "authors" of their films; the writers are just hired guns. Yet on the odd occasion when the writer's name is better known than the director's, you can't help but talk more about the script than about how the movie was put… read more!
Melancholia
Melancholia's first 8 minutes are filled with a series of astoundingly beautiful, surreal tableaux of Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and child actor Cameron Spurr, filmed in super-slow-motion. They are among the most arresting images you will see on a screen in this or any year. But the film that follows is more typical polarizing filmmaking from Danish provocateur Lars von… read more!
Memento
Grim film noir with a fascinating premise: a man on the hunt for his wife's killer suffers from an extreme case of short-term memory loss – and a fascinating structure: the film begins at the end and works backwards through a series of scenes, like Harold Pinter's Betrayal but with more twists. Leonard (Guy Pearce) has been suffering from his… read more!
Men
During the opening moments of Men, a London woman named Harper (Jessie Buckley) watches in shock as a man (Paapa Essiedu) falls past her window to his death, making eye contact with her as he descends in slow motion. We soon learn, in flashbacks, that this man was Harper's emotionally manipulative husband, whom she was preparing to divorce. Was it… read more!
The Menu
The Menu opens with eleven ultra-wealthy people boarding a boat bound for a tiny East Coast island on which sits Hawthorne, one of the most exclusive restaurants in the world. (Real-life foodie meccas like KOKS, on the Faroe Islands, serve as the obvious inspiration.) Within the first few minutes, we see that something's amiss: Margo (Anya Taylor-Joy), who has arrived… read more!
Michael Clayton
George Clooney plays the protagonist of the title, a "clean-up man" at a high-powered New York law firm whose job is apparently to cover the butts of the firm's clients whenever one of them gets into personal trouble. His latest assignment: hush up one of the firm's own partners, Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson, fine as usual), who has gone off… read more!
Micmacs
Fans of wacky French director Jeunet, the man behind such mini-classics as Delicatessen and Amélie, know what to expect from his work at this point, and Micmacs doesn't disappoint. Although the film's first act is so whimsical that it nearly becomes too precious, this story about a man with a bullet lodged in his skull who decides to get revenge… read more!
Midnight in Paris
Woody Allen's love letter to Paris is a charming romantic comedy about a successful Hollywood screenwriter (Owen Wilson), insecure about his first novel, who is vacationing in the City of Light with his materialistic fiancée (Rachel McAdams) and her parents. Strolling alone through the streets at midnight, he is hailed by an old-fashioned automobile and promptly whisked off to the… read more!