Rocks

Welcome to the back of the bus, white boy.
- Bobby Joe Hill (Derek Luke), Glory Road

You know the drill. Enthusiastic, hard-driving coach arrives at a backwater school and inspires his underdog team to athletic and moral victories, and oh yes, coach's wife provides heartfelt reaction shots from stands. This version is yet again based on a true story, wherein brilliant young basketball players must... continue

2005 hasn't been a banner year for animated releases, with all of them falling into two categories-the slight and amiable ("Robots," "Chicken Little," "Valiant") and the purely disposable ("Madagascar,"... continue

No Substitutions

She's our queen. This young lady is so multitalented. She's still the girl next door. She still comes home to Newark.
- Mayor Sharpe James, New York Times, 12 January 2006

"Keep Christ in Christmas," reads a poster at the church where Georgia Byrd (Queen Latifah) sings in the choir. The camera's brief pan of the group reveals they are earnest and hardworking, preparing their performance for a visit from... continue

Color me a non-fan of period pictures (most are difficult to relate to because of the characters' monotonously archaic actions and ways of thinking), and specifically, just as little of a fan of the horse and drawbridge and swordfight-style battle epics. There have been a few solid examples of this genre (i.e. 2000's "Gladiator"), but in recent years, most have gone the way of 2004's overblown "Troy,"... continue

With just two major movies under his belt-2003's "House of the Dead" and 2005's "Alone in the Dark"-Uwe Boll has shot to fame, and not the good kind. A director so incompetent that the very job title of director seems too praiseworthy for what he does with a script, his actors and the camera, Boll has made two gigantic-and... continue

Come Spirit

White men invade. Native peoples resist. Tragedy results. It's an old story, certainly, with history and fiction alike dominated by imperial projects. In the fabled case of John Smith and Pocahontas, this story is not only familiar but also consequential, a kind of map for the lands, futures, and cultures that would be so completely reshaped by their collision in a seeming 15th-century paradise.
... continue

Jazz is often described as the only truly indigenous American art form, but what of the Hollywood western? With a moral code so unambiguous that its heroes and villains come in color-coded hats, the cowboy movie is the embodiment of our national myth: headstrong, violent and (like jazz) racially segregated.

If the cowboy movies of John Wayne and John Ford were about the opening of the American West, ``Brokeback Mountain'' is the somber slam of its closing. Based... continue

Alternatives

"This is the voice," says Bree (Felicity Huffman), practicing her woman's pitch. As if to do battle with the world, she prepares carefully before heading out the door, ensuring that her body is properly contained, her nails appropriately pink, her lipstick perfectly blushy. If she's not precisely the image on her Glamour magazine, she's as close as most mortal women might be. Bree means to... continue