The Reel World

Oct 07 2008 – You ought to be in pictures Grandpa isn’t the only one who thinks those old family home movies make great viewing.

Sep 23 2008 – The other woman Bodice-ripper "The Other Boleyn Girl" is more than just a lush period film based on a popular historical novel: it is probably the scariest movie I have ever seen.

Sep 10 2008 – Smart people, dumb movie "Juno" fans rejoice. You can catch another witty hyper-verbal performance by Ellen Page in "Smart People," in which she plays another extremely intelligent teenager.

Aug 26 2008 – Not much waffling ‘In Bruges’ Life can really surprise you sometimes.

Aug 15 2008 – Order of Mythbusters The most dramatic moment in the screening of Margaret Brown’s highly anticipated "The Order of Myths" at The Saenger Theatre Thursday, July 31, came not during but immediately following the film.

Jul 29 2008 – Found in Translation I guess it makes sense that a director whose work has been so deeply influenced by one place should be profoundly different when transplanted to another location.

Jul 15 2008 – More like ‘I’m so there’ While the gimmick of having Cate Blanchett play Bob Dylan begs at least giving "I’m Not There" a look, Todd Haynes’ lyrical, evocative film is a masterpiece, with merits far beyond the novelty of uncanny Dylan impressions.

Jul 01 2008 – The South Alabama Film Group is planning another film scramble, set for mid-summer, open to any interested filmmaker or team of filmmakers.

Jun 17 2008 – The premise of "Lars and the Real Girl" sounds outrageous and ripe for comedy.

Jun 03 2008 – Ben Affleck, who, if you remember, started out in cult classic "Dazed and Confused" (as O’Bannion, the sadistic senior desperate to paddle freshman boys) and who won an Oscar – for writing "Good Will Hunting," no less – early in his career, is clawing his way back from "Gigli" and "Daredevil" shame.

May 19 2008 – Phillip Seymour Hoffman didn’t win his Academy Award for playing a nice, normal fellow and I don’t think we can expect to see him cheering anybody up onscreen any time soon.

May 06 2008 – I am not one of the rabid fans of Jon Krakauer’s 1997 book "Into the Wild" awaiting the film version with excitement and trepidation.

Apr 22 2008 – Until the much-anticipated Crescent Theatre opens its doors this summer so we can see more obscure cinema offerings, Mobile’s film community (yes, we have one!

Apr 08 2008 – Of all the films that Tim Burton has made in which Johnny Depp plays a tortured, pale, misunderstood man with wild black hair who lives in a garret and wields sharp metal, "Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street" is one of my favorites.

Mar 25 2008 – Nowhere is "mood music" more vitally important than in cinema.

Mar 11 2008 – I really loved Noah Baumbach’s 2005 film ‘The Squid and the Whale." I guess he did, too, because his latest film, "Margot at the Wedding," is essentially a rehashing of the same kinds of characters he created much more successfully in his earlier work.

Feb 25 2008 – There is such a thing as a good fantasy film. If you go into it expecting to see a few dragons, the occasional wand, and to generally suspend disbelief, you can enjoy the best from this genre without succumbing to a lifelong obsession with dungeons or dragons.

Feb 12 2008 – The witty, natural dialogue in Julie Delpy’s "2 Days in Paris" takes it beyond its simple boy-meets-girl, boy-meets-girl’s crazy parents, boy-meets-girl’s disturbing number of old boyfriends, plot.

Jan 28 2008 – It may not exactly be Sundance, but come check out the filmmakers on the continuing Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers and maybe one day we’ll be saying that we knew them when.

Jan 15 2008 – If you’re not a fan of Ethan Hawke, you will not like "The Hottest State." Uma Thurman, for example, probably didn’t like it.

Jan 01 2008 – During a holiday bout of the DVD board game Scene It!

Dec 18 2007 – People have many different holiday traditions. All of mine seem to center around the solemn viewing of Christmas films.

Dec 04 2007 – I have held on to my love for Luke and Owen Wilson as long as I could, but I cannot hold on much longer.

Nov 20 2007 – In "The TV Set," David Duchovny plays a sincere writer trying to bring a quality series to television.

Nov 06 2007 – Southern Arts Federation’s Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers continues its sophisticated and surprising screenings with "Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea" Tuesday, Nov.

Oct 23 2007 – The seventh season of the Mobile Jewish Film Festival features the most exciting and varied line-up so far, with feature films and documentaries, and subjects ranging from the Holocaust to the present by filmmakers from all over the world.

Oct 09 2007 – It is interesting two films about Truman Capote writing In Cold Blood came out in the same year, not just because it is a huge bummer for the folks who made the one that didn’t win an Oscar, but because both deal with the vast range of interpretation that can still pass for truth.

Sep 25 2007 – It was wonderful to witness so many film fans turn out for the weird and wonderful opening of the Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers at Bernheim Hall.

Sep 11 2007 – I’m proud to say that Mobile is one of stops on the Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers; the first event in this exciting series is Tuesday, Sept.

Aug 28 2007 – If you’re still trying to figure out what happened in David Lynch’s 2001 "Mulholland Drive," I have bad news for you.

Aug 14 2007 – "Diggers" is the kind of seemingly effortless little movie that makes people think that anyone with a digital video camera can write a movie.

Jul 31 2007 – "Miss Potter" is a sincere but sleep-inducing biopic of the beloved children’s author and illustrator, Beatrix Potter.

Jul 17 2007 – You approach the film adaptation of a book with trepidation; sometimes, you’re not disappointed.

Jul 03 2007 – "The Fountain" began as an intriguing, gorgeous film about a man’s (Hugh Jackman) search for eternal life at the behest of the Queen of Spain (Rachel Weisz) during the Inquisition.

Jun 19 2007 – "The Queen" examines the attitudes and events within the British Royal family in the immediate aftermath of the death of Princess Diana.

Jun 05 2007 – If you’re looking for a fanciful romp through splendid fairylands, I’d rent plain old "Labyrinth" instead of "Pan’s Labyrinth." The latter is a dark exploration of the terrors of growing up, set against a violent backdrop of fascist Spain in 1944.

May 22 2007 – Newsflash: suburbia has an unsavory underbelly. Yet another film has been made around the tired premise that moms are mean and competitive, men look at pornography on the Internet, and some of your neighbors are perverts.

May 08 2007 – From what I understand, it’s pretty hard work being a teacher, and, if you believe what you see in the movies, which I obviously do, sometimes it takes more than a summer vacation to get you through.

Apr 25 2007 – I must begin this week with a correction from last issue: the splendid, chic Skyview Lounge is located on the top floor of the Lafayette Plaza Hotel, not the Riverview.

Apr 10 2007 – It’s hard to say what the most exciting part of the March 27th meeting of the Mobile Film Group was.

Mar 28 2007 – Somewhere between "Best in Show" and "A Mighty Wind" writer/director/actor Christopher Guest changed from "mockumentary" to "documentary." Perhaps the people in "For Your Consideration" don’t actually exist, but this movie is also not a comedy in the sense that it will make you laugh.

Mar 13 2007 – When I heard that Sofia Coppola’s "Marie Antoinette" was booed at a film festival, I started to try to imagine how revolutionary a film it must be.

Feb 27 2007 – "Amelie" meets "Naked Lunch" in Michel Gondry’s glorious "The Science of Sleep." The almost unbearably appealing Gael Garcia Bernal ("Y tu Mamá También") plays a shy, creative artist, who is stuck in a monotonous job, pining for his neighbor, and missing his recently deceased father.

Feb 27 2007 – "Amelie" meets "Naked Lunch" in Michel Gondry’s glorious "The Science of Sleep." The almost unbearably appealing Gael Garcia Bernal ("Y tu Mamá También") plays a shy, creative artist, who is stuck in a monotonous job, pining for his neighbor, and missing his recently deceased father.

Feb 27 2007 – "Amelie" meets "Naked Lunch" in Michel Gondry’s glorious "The Science of Sleep." The almost unbearably appealing Gael Garcia Bernal ("Y tu Mamá También") plays a shy, creative artist, who is stuck in a monotonous job, pining for his neighbor, and missing his recently deceased father.

Feb 13 2007 – I hate going out on Valentine’s Day. It rivals New Year’s Eve in length of wait for a table, prix-fixe menu gouging, and impossibly high expectations.

Jan 30 2007 – "The Last Kiss." It seemingly has all the elements of a mushy date movie: the word "kiss," romantic entanglements, Zach Braff.

Jan 16 2007 – "The OH in Ohio" is one of those films with a premise that could go either way.

Jan 02 2007 – To say that "Clerks 2" exceeded my expectations is not exactly a compliment since those expectations were rather low.

Dec 19 2006 – Netflix has a convenient feature that allows you to see all the movies you’ve previously rented for purposes of reminiscence and self-reflection.

Dec 05 2006 – By this time next year, we’ll all be sitting in the dark together, watching independent films at a restored historic location downtown, munching on locally made goodies and patting wallets unravaged by bloated multiplex prices.

Nov 21 2006 – "American Dreamz" embodies all that is lazy and poorly made in a satire.

Nov 08 2006 – Watching "A Prairie Home Companion" is like a visit with your great great uncle: pleasant enough, rambling, quiet, slow and, if you’re lucky, mercifully short.

Oct 25 2006 – Between the Arts Alive! Film Festival on November 3rd and the Mobile Jewish Film Festival this weekend, you’re not going to have time to stay home and rent "Nacho Libre." So much the better; what a wonderful and unique dilemma for Mobilians.

Oct 10 2006 – Sometimes, as I lug my baby’s heavy and ergonomically disastrous carrier in and out of the car for yet another trip to the mall with every other mom in town, I find myself wishing I lived someplace with foot traffic, where we could stroll about outside on a sidewalk to centrally located stuff to do.

Sep 27 2006 – Nicole Holofcener is the queen of the talky, intellectual chick flick.

Sep 13 2006 – John Wayne continues to roll in his big and tall grave as the dismantling of the cowboy mythos continues with Tommy Lee Jones’ freaky yet boring "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada." (Or as it is sometimes known, "TheThree Naps of Asia Frey.") Directed by and starring the interestingly worn face of Jones, this movie was written by Guillermo Arriaga, who wrote "21 Grams." Like that vastly more compelling film, this one is a tale of personal justice and redemption.

Aug 29 2006 – "Mean Girls" meets "The Maltese Falcon" in "Brick," a thriller set in a high school where all the kids are tough, jaded and talk like adults from the 1930s.

Aug 16 2006 – In the tradition of clever, movie-within-a-movie meta-flicks like "Adaptation," "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story" tells both the story of Tristram Shandy and the story of making the movie of Tristram Shandy, as the ultimate tribute to a book that works in a similarly post-modern way.

Aug 01 2006 – Oscar Wilde is the second hardest working man in Hollywood.

Jul 19 2006 – Everybody likes comic waif Sarah Silverman because she’s so profane and yet so darn cute.

Jul 05 2006 – Witty, fast and extremely funny, "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" cleverly sends up the detective genre, as a real detective, a thief-turned-actor taking "detective lessons" and a beautiful girl try to solve a murder mystery.

Jun 21 2006 – Austin filmmaker and Mobile native Margaret Brown, whose dad is local musician Milton Brown, has done a fairly interesting job with a less-than-interesting subject in her documentary "Be Here to Love Me," the story of relatively unknown singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt.

Jun 06 2006 – Steve Martin’s film career is full of hits and misses.

May 23 2006 – Like a doctored photo on Match.com, the movie preview often lures us viewers in on false pretenses.

May 09 2006 – Since the birth of my baby two weeks ago, an important factor in movie selection has guided all of my viewing choices- rewatchability.

Apr 26 2006 – It is a truth universally acknowledged that all Jane Austen novels must be in want of a good movie version – or several.

Apr 11 2006 – I will not rent movies just because Peter Sarsgaard is in them.

Mar 29 2006 – The first scene of "The Squid and the Whale" is one of the most deftly written, subtly efficient expository scenes I have seen in a movie.

Mar 14 2006 – There are so many movies I saw this year that I liked better than "Crash." Two of them, "Capote" and "Brokeback Mountain," were also nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars.

Mar 01 2006 – Woody Allen is a bleak, amoral little man, and "Match Point" reflects this philosophy of life.

Feb 14 2006 – I have essentially no interest in rap music. So why did I find "Hustle and Flow" so interesting?

Jan 31 2006 – By Asia Frey Film critic I was really pulling for "Brokeback Mountain" in the Golden Globes, not because I had seen it, but because I wanted to see it.

Jan 18 2006 – Bill Murray has perfected his silent, morose, secretly fragile middle-aged persona.

Jan 04 2006 – I don’t understand why no one, including me, went to see "Cinderella Man." You can correct the mistake now that it’s on DVD.

Dec 21 2005 – I get lots of e-mail asking me what my favorite movies are.

Dec 07 2005 – "My Summer of Love" reveals the complexities of class, sex and friendship in the lives of two very different teenage girls in England.