The New Republic

Bram Stoker must be spinning in his grave. In Dracula, he introduced one of the great hero-intellectuals in modern literature in Professor Abraham Von Helsing, "a philosopher and a metaphysician, and one of the most advanced scientists of his day." In the movie Van Helsing, by contrast, Stoker's creation is rendered as basically a meathead. Not only has he lost his academic pedigree, he shows little familiarity even with the details of his chosen profession of monster-slaying. READ MORE >>

In the 1994 movie Stargate, director Roland Emmerich presented us with an interstellar portal leading to a planet populated by ancient Egyptian look-alikes. Two years later, with Independence Day, he offered a genocidal alien invasion that was overcome by two guys spreading a computer virus. And two years after that, his Godzilla featured a 200-foot-tall radioactive iguana running amuck in Manhattan. READ MORE >>

"Cutting social commentary"; "acutely hilarious sociology"; "a harbinger of hope ... for future feminist comedies." These were some of the peculiar accolades bestowed upon the movie Mean Girls when it opened in theaters. Why did critics accord it such stature? Doubtless because it was, in the words of one, the "best teen comedy ever adapted from a sociological study." In actuality, the source material--Rosalind Wiseman's book Queen Bees %amp% Wannabes--is not a sociological study but a parenting guide, and Mean Girls is in no meaningful way "adapted" from it. READ MORE >>

It's often said that smell is the sense most closely tied to memory. This is nonsense. Yes, a scent may on occasion provoke an emphatic, unmediated recollection, but it is typically an imprecise one--a general period in one's life rather than a particular moment. Our specific memories, by contrast, are primarily visual and auditory, not unlike a movie playing in the mind's eye. It's hardly surprising, then, that cinema has often been described as a kind of synthetic memory.  As John Malkovich, playing director F.W. READ MORE >>

There are different ways a director can disappear from public consciousness. He can release films so infrequently that for long periods of time people forget he's alive (Terence Malick). Or he can hide in plain sight, steadily churning out movies that betray little sign of his former genius (Woody Allen). The Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan (the former directs, the latter produces, and both co-write), appear set on the latter course. READ MORE >>

It's almost embarrassing to write about The Passion of the Christ at this point. Nearly as much ink has been spilled lauding or condemning the movie as fake blood was spilled filming it. This is particularly problematic for those, like me, who found the movie cynical and grotesque: It's clear that its extraordinary success was due overwhelmingly to its attendant controversies, controversies it was consciously engineered to stoke. READ MORE >>

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<?xml:namespace prefix = dsl />Almost a decade ago, Danish director Lars von Trier co-founded the Dogme 95 movement, which produced an "indisputable set of rules" for filmmakers called "The Vow of Chastity." Among its ten commandments: "Shooting must be done on location"; "The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa"; "The camera must be hand-held"; "Special lighting is not acceptable." READ MORE >>

Well, at least we find out how it ends. After two installments and four hours of running time, Kill Bill finally reveals whether it will fulfill the promise of its title. Now we can all move on. READ MORE >>

I don't like to think of myself as the kind of person who would open a column with a reference to a Billy Joel song. But this week, while ruminating on the often-inverse relationship between quality and longevity, I fleetingly considered it. I don't mind saying it scared me a little. READ MORE >>