Scott's 'Gladiator' survives epic battle with mediocrity
Welcome, summer; "Gladiator" is here.
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Welcome, summer; "Gladiator" is here.
Just when you think the Corner has nothing more to offer, when you've been there and done that at every watering hole, coffee shop and eatery, University Avenue's easy-access cultural hub jumps up and surprises you.
In director Steven Soderbergh's diverse body of work, there emerges one unifying theme: His protagonists are all loners, all male. Boys, it's time to say hello to "Erin Brockovich."
It is a monument to the best of taste and the worst of taste.
The lilting spirit of Gilbert and Sullivan's flights of operatic fancy is dishearteningly scarce in "Topsy-Turvy," writer-director Mike Leigh's reverent but rambling slice-of-life period piece. Leigh ("Secrets & Lies") delves indulgently into the lives of two of the Victorian era's foremost artistic creators, but with little insight into the process that he devotes so much time to exploring.
When you see 70 movies a year, you have to keep track of what you've seen. It helps jog the memory; it's good for compiling end-of-year lists and handicapping Oscars. And it also helps me in this venture: exposing the increasingly unbearable conditions of film exhibition in the Charlottesville area.
For my money, the '90s didn't really begin until 1993; nothing before that stands up to what came after. It was a phenomenal year, and may attain some significance in film history as the year when the voices that emerged in the '70s reclaimed their former brilliance, before the new brood took over and changed absolutely everything. Martin Scorsese paid provocative tribute to Italian director Luchino Visconti and broke new visual ground in "The Age of Innocence," an engrossing evocation of time and place - and a beautifully acted love story - that I believe eclipses all his work except "Raging Bull."
"Sleepy Hollow" is Tim Burton's mad fairy-tale nightmare, but it's not one to make you break out into a cold sweat, wishing you could turn on the lights or run to Mommy. Like many dreams, it's vivid at the time but instantly forgettable in the aftermath.
The Ground Beneath Her Feet," Salman Rushdie's seventh novel, is an engrossing, if sometimes maddening, minor masterpiece - a brazen, bombastic journey through the last half century that owes its success to the twisted genius of Rushdie's epic vision.
Lifting Virginia Woolf's original (and perhaps more appropriate) title for "Mrs. Dalloway," Michael Cunningham attempts in "The Hours" to craft a worthy sequel to Woolf's seminal ode to life, London and modernity. And he almost pulls it off.
As if Harold Pinter's plays weren't confusing enough. Now the Drama department has gone and gender-bent one of them.
"Fight Club" is a movie to endure, not to enjoy. But it may well merit a second viewing.
Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable are pretty, all right, but when the CinemaScope image seduces you, it's the beginning of a love affair that lasts a lifetime.
Film festivals are usually seen as events for cineastes, not movie lovers. Both groups share a passion for cinema, but entertainment isn't enough for festival crowds: They like to discuss, deconstruct and disseminate.
"Fight Club" is a movie to endure, not to enjoy. But it may well merit a second viewing.
The falseness of the suburban ideal, the restrictive nature of middle-class social and gender roles, the redemptive power of beauty in a world gone mad: These ideas have been developed before, in art and theater, literature and film, but rarely so compellingly as in "American Beauty."
The falseness of the suburban ideal, the restrictive nature of middle-class social and gender roles, the redemptive power of beauty in a world gone mad: These ideas have been developed before, in art and theater, literature and film, but rarely so compellingly as in "American Beauty."