You know you're going to get a different kind of superhero when you cast Robert Downey Jr. in the lead role. And Iron Man is different, in welcome ways. Cleverly updated from Marvel Comics' longstanding series, Iron Man puts billionaire industrialist Tony Stark (that's Downey) in the path of some Middle Eastern terrorists; in a brilliantly paced section, Stark invents an ...
You know you're going to get a different kind of superhero when you cast Robert Downey Jr. in the lead role. And Iron Man is different, in welcome ways. Cleverly updated from Marvel Comics' longstanding series, Iron Man puts billionaire industrialist Tony Stark (that's Downey) in the path of some Middle Eastern terrorists; in a brilliantly paced section, Stark invents an ...
Bound by love for their slain adoptive mother, the brothers in Four Brothers form a unique quartet that gives John Singleton's film a razor's edge of redemption. It's a thin edge, to be sure, because while Singleton's urban Western pays homage to the Blaxpoitation films of the '70s (as he did with his remake of Shaft), it walks a fine line of credibility with a mythic vengeance plot ...
Neil Jordan's somber The Brave One is reflective movie about a victim's sense of dislocation and isolation from her own life following a harrowing trauma, which will strike a chord with a lot of people who have known violence. The Brave One is also a provocative drama about the nature of justice, a theme explored endlessly in American movies that typically find law enforcement ...
Now here's an intriguing premise for a horror-thriller. What if you were entirely aware of what was happening mid-operation, when you were supposed to be under anaesthetic? That's just what happens to Hayden Christensen in Awake, a tidy, intriguing little film that makes a few interesting choices as its storyline evolves. Christensen plays Clay Beresford, born into a rich family and ...
An earnest and sometimes overblown story of a music teacher's impact on those around him, Mr. Holland's Opus is at times a genuinely touching drama in the vein of It's a Wonderful Life. Richard Dreyfuss (Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind) plays an aspiring composer and musician who takes a job teaching music at a local high school to earn money while he composes. ...
A glossy romantic comedy, The Best Man centres on four college friends and the women in their lives, all brought back together for a wedding. Taye Diggs (How Stella Got Her Groove Back) plays the title character, a young writer whose first novel is a barely fictionalised account of his college days, featuring barely fictionalised versions of all his friends. This novel hasn't yet ...