08/21/2008

Billy Graham movie catches flak from son Franklin
Franklin Graham has criticized the new feature film about his famous father, saying Billy: The Early Years includes a few scenes that never happened in real life and others that are “greatly embellished.”

08/20/2008

Luke Wilson takes a swing at golf fashions with Chrome line
LOS ANGELES — If the clothes make the leading man, Luke Wilson is angling to play the handsome high school lit teacher — you know, the one who made you cry when he read aloud from A Separate Peace. He rarely veers from his Kennedy-era haircut and typically shows up at events in rumpled khakis or cords and a preppy blazer. Then, there’s that squint. More musing than macho, Wilson has perfected a studied squint — or is it a wince? — that precedes his answers to tough questions.

Movie Review: ‘The Rocker’ is offbeat, upbeat, well … full of beat
At one point late in the offbeat comedy The Rocker, drummer Robert Fishman declares, “It is never too late to rock!”

08/19/2008

Movie review: Take advantage of another opportunity to view the inspirational ‘Road Home’
There were so many films in this year’s Rhode Island International Film Festival — 289 to be exact — that only a few got a chance to be reviewed in these pages. Most played for one screening and, unless they were among the lucky few to be picked up for national theatrical or TV distribution, won’t be seen in these parts again.

08/16/2008

Mirrors reflects poorly on Sutherland
Kiefer, dog, what happened to you, man? You used to be cool. We expected you to take over as your generation’s movie tough guy.

08/15/2008

Outer space mayhem
Star Wars mastermind George Lucas clearly isn’t planning to be done with his cash-cow series any time soon. You may have thought at the end of Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith, in 2005, that the epic series had come to a close, what with Anakin Skywalker going over to the Dark Side as Darth Vader.

Movie Review: Sparks fly in Woody Allen’s ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’
Vicky Cristina Barcelona continues Woody Allen’s recent cinematic tour of Europe with another morality play, one that doesn’t fit his “romantic comedy” or “melodramatic thriller” mold. But Barcelona is likable, beautifully acted, scenic and sexy, ingredients that have been missing from his films since, oh, Everyone Says I Love You (1996).

With his latest effort, Woody Allen fulfills a longtime European filmmaking fantasy
HOLLYWOOD — The only place Woody Allen ever really wants to be is in his bed. “My spot on the bed is my spot in the world,” he explains. It’s where he watches baseball games, and reads, and where he writes, usually in the morning, because if he starts at night, he sometimes gets so excited he can’t go to sleep. It’s where the act of imagination is actually “pleasurable and I might go cast the people and see my characters come to life,” he says. “And I put the music in and I see the characters playing their scenes to the beautiful music behind them. You know, I get a kick out of that. And if nobody else does, that’s too bad.”

Bottle Shock is light in flavor, with comedic overtones
The first thing you should know about the oddly titled Bottle Shock is that it’s about fathers and sons, the destruction of preconceived notions, and wine … lots and lots of wine.

And the winners are . . .
The 12th Rhode Island International Film Festival has announced its awards for the 2008 event, which closed Sunday.

Movie Review: ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ doesn’t quite lift off
Every movie studio out there wants a piece of that Pixar-DreamWorks computer-animation pie. Even start-ups like Summit Entertainment covet some of the millions that parents fork over to send their little darlings to this week’s child-safe/family friendly cartoon.

Movie review: ‘Henry Poole’ drowns in sap
Glumness specialist Luke Wilson plays the title sad sack in Henry Poole Is Here.

Video Reviews: Top-notch cast makes the best of ‘Smart People’
Although Smart People (Disney, $29.99) is smarter-than-your-average Hollywood comedy, this tale of academia and dysfunction still works only fitfully, despite a top-notch cast that includes Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker, Thomas Haden Church and Ellen Page, who earned an Academy Award nomination for the title role in 2007’s Juno.

TOP RENTALS
This list of the top rentals nationwide comes from Billboard magazine and is based on data provided by the Video Software Dealers Association.

08/14/2008

Stiller got all the action he was seeking –– and then some
Ben Stiller handed them out to cast and crew at the conclusion of a punishing 13-week location shoot as a gesture of thanks, but also contrition: T-shirts that read “I SURVIVED BEN STILLER’S COMEDY DEATH CAMP.”

08/13/2008

Movie Review: ‘Tropic Thunder’ a roaring laugh
The freewheeling comedy Tropic Thunder, about a crew making a war movie in Vietnam and unwittingly getting caught up in a real life-or-death adventure, starts off like a house afire.

08/09/2008

Lifebeat Pop Quiz: Holy box office, Batman!
Even though it was released only a few weeks ago, The Dark Knight is already one of the top 10 grossing movies of all time, according to the Internet Movie Database Web site, imdb.com. Shown here are the other nine films on the list. Can you put all 10 in the correct order? (Amounts are based on movie ticket sales, and don’t include video rentals, television rights and other revenues; figures are not adjusted for inflation.)

Clever, funny films in 48 hours
Nearly 600 amateur filmmakers spent 48 hours on the weekend of July 18 to 20 all over the state making 52 short films as part of the third annual 48 Hour Film Project.

08/10/2008

On the Hollywood Trail
For 20 years, the routine had been the same.

08/08/2008

R.I. International Film Festival: ‘Satellites and Meteorites’ goes ’round and ’round
In writer-director Rick Larkin’s offbeat romantic fantasy Satellites and Meteorites a man and woman lie in comas in an Irish hospital, linked only by an auto accident yet drawn together in their dreams to each other.

Crazy as ever, Winters hasn’t lost it in ‘Certifiably Jonathan’
Wacky comedian Jonathan Winters, who kept America in stitches for more than a generation from the 1950s to the ’80s, is the funny heart of Certifiably Jonathan, writer-director Jim Pasternak’s weirdly offbeat mockumentary which is showing tomorrow and Sunday at the Rhode Island International Film Festival.

Humor goes up in smoke
The recent news that Richard Marin and Thomas Chong are going to reunite as Cheech and Chong, again doing their high-on-marijuana act that kept audiences in the 1970s doubled over with drug-induced laughter, shouldn’t come as a surprise to the producers of Pineapple Express.

Taking chances with R-rated comedy
In comedy, Hollywood has learned that raunch sells.

Movie Review: ‘Louisa May Alcott’ is a tale of success
Despite her international fame for having written the classic Little Women, Louisa May Alcott tells us right up front at the start of the engrossing documentary Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women that she only wrote pap for young readers because it paid well.

When Pineapple Express needed a theme song, Lewis answered the call
Ask ’80s pop-rock superstar Huey Lewis how he wound up recording the title song for stoner action-comedy Pineapple Express, and he’ll basically shrug.

Lucas says that without Ford, there’ll be no Indy
George Lucas says he’s already identified the one person who can keep the Indiana Jones franchise going: Harrison Ford.

Video review: ‘Nim’s Island’ a sweet tropical adventure
Abigail Breslin and Jodie Foster team up for enough adventures to keep even Indiana Jones busy in Nim’s Island (Fox, $29.98).

Top video rentals
This list of the top rentals nationwide comes from Billboard magazine and is based on data provided by the Video Software Dealers Association.

08/07/2008

R.I. International Film Festival: ’50s horror films lovingly recalled in ‘Spine Tingler’
Baby Boomers who went to the movies in the 1950s will surely remember the films produced by William Castle, a huckstering showman who prided himself on being in a direct line from P.T. Barnum.

R.I. International Film Festival: ‘Garrison Keillor: The Man on the Radio with the Red Tennis Shoes’
You may know Garrison Keillor’s voice from his many appearances over the years on National Public Radio’s A Prairie Home Companion, a folksy mix of light humor, Will Rogers’ style common sense and the kind of music you don’t hear almost anywhere anymore.

R.I. International Film Festival: Heartthrob can’t lift sad lead role in ‘How to Be’
According to staff members at the 12th Rhode Island International Film Festival, the greatest interest in any film at this year’s festival has been generated by the British film How to Be, which will play tomorrow.

08/06/2008

Movie extravaganza

The Sisterhood is funny, touching, sentimental
People who fell in love with the four teenage girls who overcame everyday crises in the 2005 hit The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants will be heartened to know that although the gals are now between their freshman and sophomore years at college, this sequel is every bit as solid and delightful as the original.

Rhode Island International Film Festival: Nashville guitarist was ‘Crazy’ — but biopic is on the level
While watching director Rick Bieber’s Crazy, I started to wonder why a movie this good has not yet been picked up for release by a major studio.

Rhode Island International Film Festival: Horse story is a classic — and it’s all true
Writer-director John Corey’s documentary Lost in the Fog, which will be screened tomorrow afternoon as part of the Rhode Island International Film Festival, is a Seabiscuit story for the 21st century.

Ex-Trinity actor and Frasier regular to speak at Brown
Actor Dan Butler, who once was on stage at Trinity Rep and later was a regular on TV’s Frasier, will deliver the keynote speech tomorrow at the two-day Rhode Island Film Forum at Brown University, which addresses all aspects of film production.

08/05/2008

Cheers regular is New Englander at heart
John Ratzenberger.

Poignant Village Barbershop is a cut above
A widower whose life is falling apart and is in danger of losing his barbershop finds redemption and hope in a young woman whose own life is falling apart in writer-director Chris Ford’s sweet, sentimental The Village Barbershop, which plays the Rhode Island International Film Festival tomorrow night.

Rhode Island International Film Festival: Short films kick off festival tonight
The 12th Rhode Island International Film Festival gets off to an auspicious start at 7 tonight in the cavernous Providence Performing Arts Center with a selection of short films that range from 7 to 24 minutes.

08/04/2008

Wise beyond her years
BOSTON Madeline Carroll, who is winning praise from the critics for her first starring role, as Kevin Costner’s determined and wise daughter in Swing Vote, is poised and confident during an early morning interview at a posh hotel. She seems older and wiser than her 12 years.

08/03/2008

289 hot tickets
PROVIDENCE Jessie Pittrizzi, a student intern from South Carolina who is working for the summer with the 12th annual Rhode Island International Film Festival, rolls her eyes and says with a sigh, “I love the moms.”

08/01/2008

Corrente postpones production of ‘The Prince of Providence’
Michael Corrente, who had said amid much fanfare when announcing last June that he planned to begin filming his Buddy Cianci saga The Prince of Providence in mid-August, has decided to wait until mid-September to see whether the Screen Actors Guild will go on strike.

Movie review: When a presidential election relies on one man, Costner rocks the ‘Vote’
With its “and a little child shall lead them” theme revolving around a father whose single vote can decide the U.S. presidency, Swing Vote is certainly the most timely family-oriented comedy to come along in this presidential election year. And probably the only one.

Brideshead Revisited is revisited again, but briefly
Brideshead Revisited is an unimpeachable yet ultimately unmoving adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s classic novel about social ambition, religious conflict and doomed love.

Movie review: Tell everyone about this film noir thriller
In the shortcut language of a movie pitch, Guillaume Canet’s delicious contemporary thriller Tell No One is Vertigo meets The Fugitive by way of The Big Sleep. That is meant as high praise.

Movie review: Predictable battles unravel ‘The Mummy’
Apparently having exhausted the audience’s taste for Egyptology, the producers of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor have set their film in China just after World War II.

Love it or hate it, Brideshead Revisited was epic 1980s TV
In certain quarters the film version of Brideshead Revisited will bring doubt, dismissal, sourness and myriad other disappointments, reflexively and with no particular regard for its merits. For loyalists, the 1981 British television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s novel of faith and dissipation, first shown here on PBS in 1982, obviated any need for a revival.

Top video rentals
This list of the top rentals nationwide comes from Billboard magazine and is based on data provided by the Video Software Dealers Association.

Video review: Scorsese shines a light on the Rolling Stones
Thirty years after making one of the greatest rock ’n’ roll films, Martin Scorsese has made a very good one.

CRITICS’ CORNER
Movies are ranked according to The Journal’s system of one to five stars, with one star being the lowest.