-
Batman Begins (2005, Dir. Christopher Nolan) Batman has always been the most saturnine of superheroes — no ordinary Joe bestowed with extraordinary powers, like the Marvel heroes who have dominated…
-
Saving Face (2005, Dir. Alice Wu) You’ll never catch me dissing a first-time filmmaker, especially one with no formal film school training, who decided to adapt a treatment for a…
-
Three Times Two (Original Title: “Tres veces dos”; 2005, Cuba, directed by Pavel Giroud, Lester Hamlet, and Esteban Insausti) As I mentioned in my review of Suite Habana, which was…
-
Sin City (2005, Dir. Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller): A common complaint about comic book movies — that is, the movies actually based on comic books, as opposed to comic-book…
-
Yesterday I saw a dentist for the first time in nine years. No defense: I was in Asia between 1994-8, and bereft of anything resembling an actual health plan, but…
-
I have a fondness for Agatha Christie, perhaps unexplainable. As a literary writer, she was nearly hopeless. Characters struggled to attain a single dimension, dialogue went hamfisted at the drop…
-
“What are you doing back here?”“I’m a homing pigeon. I come back to this stinking coop, no matter how late it is.” “Murder, My Sweet” It’s usually unsaid, but the…
-
My President’s Day weekend was dominated by two events: the San Francisco Chinese New Year Treasure Hunt and the usual bout of movie watching. The former is an indispensible experience…
-
For the past month, as is sometimes my wont, I have been catching up on a TV show. This in itself is not unusual — in the Pre-Tivo Era, I…
-
“It is my business to conduct one end of a conversation, as an amateur critic among amateur critics.” — James Agee, The Nation I don’t know where we’re going, this…
