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Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005, Dir. Doug Liman) “I never said all actors are cattle … what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.” — Alfred Hitchcock…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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“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…
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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…
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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…
