items tagged with Laura Linney

Among the year’s seemingly endless spate of business-as-usual Hollywood product, with the remakes and sequels and – in the case of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines – a de facto remake of a sequel, I saw exactly one work in 2003 that, with absolutely no qualms, I would call a masterpiece, and it made its debut on HBO. (It was that kind of year.)
Read More About 2003 In Movies...

LOVE ACTUALLY

If you are to believe the (mostly) glowing responses to Love Actually, writer-director Richard Curtis has compressed material for a half-dozen romantic comedies into one, creating, in the words of one reviewer, “an epic romantic comedy.” But that’s not exactly accurate. For his first directorial outing, Curtis – the clever, funny screenwriter of Four Weddings & A Funeral and Notting Hill – has apparently decided to take every idea he’s ever had, every last one, and blend them into a frothy, holiday-themed confection; it’s less an epic romantic comedy than a romantic comedy shaped as an epic (which isn’t the same).

MYSTIC RIVER

It’s tempting to say that in Mystic River, Clint Eastwood’s complex, heartbreaking adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s terrific murder mystery, Sean Penn gives the most nuanced approximation of grief to be found anywhere in modern movies.

THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE

Reading the reviews for Alan Parker’s The Life of David Gale, you might assume that it’s the most staggeringly offensive cinematic release since Freddy Got Fingered. (Glenn Kenny of Premiere magazine and Roger Ebert gave the film a combined total of zero stars.) And upon realizing that the film in question boasts the considerable acting abilities of Kevin Spacey, Kate Winslet, and Laura Linney, not to mention direction by two-time Oscar nominee Alan Parker, you’d have every right to wonder: Can the movie be that god-awful? The short answer is: No, it’s not. Parker’s film is bad, yes, but it’s bad in typical Hollywood fashion, especially for a paranoid thriller; the plot twists are ludicrous, the dialogue, especially when dealing directly with the film’s polemic over the death penalty, is clunky, and it’s so high on its do-gooder mentality that it comes off as vaguely embarrassing. But despite what you might have read, it’s not the work of Lucifer, merely the work of talented individuals acting uncharacteristically like hacks.

MEN IN BLACK II

I'm not sure how much there is to say about Men in Black II, director Barry Sonnenfeld’s sequel to his sci-fi/comedy smash. There’s always something to look at, Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones provide the occasional flash of dry wit, and it’s all over blessedly fast – the movie runs some 85 minutes with end credits, and you wouldn’t want it to last a minute longer.