Ben Nuckols

Scott's 'Gladiator' survives epic battle with mediocrity

Welcome, summer; "Gladiator" is here. The solstice may be a month away yet, but to moviegoers, the season begins when a film arrives brandishing bombast and budget, immediately dwarfing its competition, making us ask what exactly we were spending our money on for the past three months. Brains are a bonus in this sort of endeavor, and "Gladiator" reasonably raised expectations that it would have as many smarts as swords, with a real actor, Russell Crowe, in the lead, and a true visionary, Ridley Scott ("Blade Runner," "Thelma & Louise"), behind the camera. So it is with some disappointment that I bring you the report from inside the arena: "Gladiator" is a summer movie through and through, a bloody but superficial spectacle built on a foundation of dollars, not ideas.

Overlooked artwork emerges from Corner

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. There's food, sure.

Fiery Roberts sizzles in 'Brockovich'

In director Steven Soderbergh's diverse body of work, there emerges one unifying theme: His protagonists are all loners, all male.

Fourth-year makes final trek to local breakfast joint, home of strawberry waffles, bottomless coffee cups and deer antlers

It is a monument to the best of taste and the worst of taste. The Tavern, a pancake house on Emmet St.

'Topsy-Turvy' tumbles under its own weight

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.

Regal Cinemas rules town with incompetence, indifference

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.

For my money, the '90s didn't really begin until 1993; nothing before that stands up to what came after.

Burton's 'Hollow' tale just that

"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.

Cunningham channels Woolf in 'The Hours'

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.

Rushdie's raucous rock-and-roll epic

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. Touted as "his first novel set largely in the United States," "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" is far too vast to be grounded in one place: Rushdie follows his and his narrator's muse, rock goddess Vina Apsara, wherever she treads.