Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The director Steve McQueen has found a way to constantly include the element of surprise in his work, both as an artist and as a filmmaker.
Berry was a transitional and, to my mind, revolutionary black figure who had to find a place for the rage that the crucible of racism created.
I've been cheered by the reaction to what I've done with Film Independent at LACMA and the organizational support I've received in pursuing it.
It's more dangerous to be a friend or relative of Jackie Chan in the star's movies than it is to play the third yeoman on a 'Star Trek' episode.
'Black Hawk Down' wants to be about something, and in the midst of the meticulously staged gunfire, the picture seems to choose futility arbitrarily.
The Ebert thing just didn't work out. We just couldn't, like, come to an agreement. And 'Movieline', they obviously didn't want me, because they fired me.
Scene by scene, you can't help being impressed by 'Mean Girls;' it's like a group of sketches linked by a theme, with some playing much better than others.
With his compulsively slamming lyrics and king-of-the-world delivery, DMX intuitively echoes the existentialism of the projects of the novelist Donald Goines.
If you start off as a fearsome figure in pop culture, it's almost axiomatic that at some point, years under the lights softens you into a cuddly family figure.
We do want to be diverted and be interested and be provoked by popular culture - by art, if we're lucky. And it's amazing how often people have lost sight of this.
In the early '60s, it was still a fairly subversive thing, though, to say that you should take a painting, cut it, set it on fire, step on it, hammer nails into it.
In 'The Adjustment Bureau,' Damon shows movie-star concentration as David Norris, a politician whose world ambitions hit a pothole when his angry streak becomes public.
Stewart's interest in serious acting gives her something in common with Theron - and, like Theron, some of her most provocative work has come through working with women.
It's an oddity that will be avoided by millions of people, this new 'Pinocchio.' Osama bin Laden could attend a showing in Times Square and be confident of remaining hidden.
Though finally overwhelmed by a preening lassitude, 'Hotel' is never less than fascinating, breaking into multiscreen scenarios like Mr. Figgis's 2000 experiment, 'Timecode.'
Often, when Jim Carrey plays it straight, all of the vitality is drained from his face; he looks like a root-canal patient trying out a pleasant expression for his oral surgeon.
One of the best things Gwyneth Paltrow has done in years was her mesmerized, good-sport cameo in a 'Pootie' sketch, when she was melted over him like butter on an English muffin.
It's true that as Mr. Chan makes more American movies - and gets older - we will never again see the kind of fistfight choreography that the star would devote four months to shoot.
The title 'Spirited Away' could refer to what Disney has done on a corporate level to the revered Japanese animation director Hayao Miyazaki's epic and marvelous new anime fantasy.
When a director shifts gears as often as does Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, the man behind the emotionally rich debut film 'Amores Perros,' you may wonder if he knows what he wants.
The Comedy of Emasculation that Judd Apatow and his disciples have made into a separate economy was invented by the Farrelly brothers, 'Kingpin' being the strongest version of that.
In period films, it always helps to have someone built to carry a sword, and Channing Tatum clearly hasn't missed a workout for the past two years, so he fits the bill in that regard.
There's a great deal of echoing going on in 'Old School.' Mr. Piven, who played the upstart outsider in the 1994 campus comedy 'PCU,' has crossed over into playing the stiff martinet.
Adapted from the novel by L. Ron Hubbard, who cranked out sci-fi pulp by the cubic ton, 'Battlefield Earth' has the musty feel of the days when the genre's highlight was Flash Gordon.
'Plan Nine From Outer Space' for a new generation, 'Battlefield Earth' is set in the year 3000, after the beings from the planet Psychlo have conquered our planet in only nine minutes.
In 'Requiem for a Dream,' the director Darren Aronofsky's adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.'s lower-depths novel, Jared Leto has lost so much weight, he looks like another person altogether.
Some people bring their work home with them. You might suppose that Sid Mashburn is one of those guys - the man was born with a name so brand-ready he basically had to become an entrepreneur.
'Old School' is so breezy it could be a late-night talk show, especially when Craig Kilborn, of 'The Late Late Show,' sidles into camera range as a particularly loathsome competitor to Mitch.
One of the funniest things about Mr. Kaufman is that all of his filmed scripts - 'Being John Malkovich,' 'Human Nature,' 'Adaptation' and now 'Sunshine' - sound like titles from REM's 'Reckoning.'
If a movie requires the lead actor to spend a good chunk of his onscreen time talking to himself, and Popeye is unavailable because of contractual disputes, it's hard to do better than Johnny Depp.
When an actor commits himself to a role as fully as Russell Crowe does in the grandiose and silly 'Gladiator,' you may ask yourself why and at the same time thank him for his absorption in the part.
Natalie Portman's approach to acting demands that she wears her heart on her sleeve so explicitly, the heart becomes the whole garment - a crimson chemise with streaks of blue veins running across it.
Justin Lin, the writer and director of the teenage-wasteland drama 'Better Luck Tomorrow,' a shrewdly tense piece of storytelling, recognizes that sometimes it's good for a filmmaker to stir up trouble.
If Mr. Chan ever makes another movie like 'The Tuxedo,' it's American audiences that will see him in court. With 'Shanghai Knights,' he has come through with one of his best. This time, it's personable.
Music is a big part of the director's life; Ms. Coppola's previous feature, a screen adaptation of 'The Virgin Suicides,' was informed more substantially by the score by the group Air than by the narrative.
A little of the sketch character Pootie Tang went a long way on HBO's now late, probably soon to be lamented 'Chris Rock Show.' So it's surprising how much fun the character's film debut, 'Pootie Tang,' is.
No actor has made a career of exerting determination to the extent that Matt Damon has. In the 'Bourne' movies, he burned himself down to a central nervous system - his focus fried away unnecessary calories.
In 'Training Day,' Mr. Washington's dry-ice grandeur - the predator's reflexes contrasting with a pensive mouth - deserves regard, and his powerhouse virtuosity will almost guarantee him an Oscar nomination.
Like his countryman, Kiefer Sutherland, Seth Rogen has a voice that's 10 years older than he is - a combination of world-weariness and exuberance, an instrument that he's mastered for specific comic shadings.
The world may not be ready yet for the film equivalent of books on tape, but this peculiar phenomenon has arrived in the form of the film adaptation of J. K. Rowling's 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.'
The film's star, Eminem, doesn't appear to have a great deal of range, but he can play himself. Even though the protagonist is named Jimmy Smith, the thoughtful '8 Mile' is a raw version of the rapper's own story.
Whom do you feel sorrier for: the cast of 'Boat Trip' or their children? Remember, kids can be very cruel - and this latest 'get Cuba Gooding Jr. career counseling fast' project is a misfire from beginning to end.
'8 Mile' could do without an unnecessary class swipe. In a final throwdown, Rabbit clowns a competitor by revealing that the guy went to suburban Detroit Cranbrook, one of the finest private schools in the country.
I saw Berry in concert a couple of times in the late '70s - and like almost every North American male of a certain age, I went because a friend was hired by Berry that very day to be part of the legend's backup band.
His work isn't all glower. Even though he hasn't smiled in a movie since the underrated 'Proof' in the early 1990s, Mr. Crowe is given to a hurt swallow when he's uncomfortable and to a look of suffering in his eyes.
'Man is an endangered species,' announces one of the titles at the beginning of the sci-fi lump 'Battlefield Earth.' And after about 20 minutes of this amateurish picture, extinction doesn't seem like such a bad idea.
The action comedy 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl' raises one of the most overlooked and important cinematic questions of our time: Can a movie maintain the dramatic integrity of a theme park ride?
The idea of Seth Rogen as the Green Hornet so inflaming the fanboy community is amusing, since that group's 20/50 vision also had it tsking its disapproval about Michael Keaton as Batman and Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man.
The battle scenes in 'Gladiator' don't have the exultant lift of Hong Kong period-action pictures like the 'Once Upon a Time in China' series, where the fights have the eye-popping panache of dance sequences from a musical.
Before he became 'a working actor,' as he now proudly calls himself, Jamie Dornan initially caught the public's attention as a model - you may remember him from those greasy underwear ads with Eva Mendes, among many others.