Children of Men is about a miracle. Children of Men is, itself, a miracle. It’s a movie that can single-handedly remove the scales of cynicism from your eyes, reminding you of what wonders cinema is capable. It’s a movie that rejects the two modern directions of the screen – a shrinking to TV size for … Continue reading
Jesus Christ, Rocky Balboa WORKS. Not always, and certainly not consistently, but more often than not Rocky Balboa is a movie that grabs and exhilarates the audience – and that’s despite huge problems like a bizarre structure, rampantly flat acting and sloppy editing. This film just shouldn’t be this enjoyable, and that’s part of its … Continue reading
The world is changing for documentaries. In the past, not only would the ten best documentaries of any given year have been dry and probably quite boring, most of the people who read CHUD would have no chance to see them. Now docs have gone mainstream – they play all over the country, and DVDs … Continue reading
Even moreso than “Best of” lists, “Worst of” lists are highly subjective. Some people would expect a “Worst of” list to contain something like The Marine, but why would it? It seems to me that the worst movies of the year aren’t the ones that were never intended to be any good, but rather the … Continue reading
I walked out of Letters From Iwo Jima thinking that we could have saved a lot of American lives in the Pacific Theater of WWII if we had just let the Japanese alone for a bit to kill themselves. Clint Eastwood’s companion piece to the dud-ish Flags of Our Fathers is soaked in suicide, with … Continue reading
I have developed a reputation with some of the studio publicists I work with as someone who is very interested in talking to writers and directors moreso than actors. It’s true – I find that I’m fascinated by the thought behind the creation of a good movie more than the famous faces that populate it. … Continue reading
A quick caveat: This is the transcript of a press conference I was not at; thanks to the beautiful and brilliant Kara Warner for hooking us up. It’s been 13 years since Robert DeNiro’s last directorial effort, A Bronx Tale (although IMDB has him as the uncredited director of The Score?), so it’s inherently interesting … Continue reading
Let’s get this out of the way: I’ve found myself nursing a crush on Jennifer Hudson ever since I saw Dreamgirls. Not being an American Idol tolerator, I didn’t know who she was before I saw the film at a junket screening, but she instantly won me over. I saw the movie again last night … Continue reading
Danny Glover was at the Dreamgirls press junket in New York City a couple of weeks back, and I couldn’t resist asking him about his place in one of the most successful horror franchises of all time, Saw. It turns out that Danny was feeling a little candid that day… Are you surprised at how … Continue reading
We Are Marshall is the most insidious kind of bad movie – the very well made kind. It’s an easy, often beautiful, movie to watch, and if you’re not inoculated against the most base brand of movie cheese, it’s an easy movie to weep over. But it’s still bad, bad at it’s very core, because … Continue reading