Film

  2006   Oliver Stone seemed a peculiar choice to direct a movie about 9/11, but “World Trade Center” proves the skeptics wrong. Stone’s most restrained work to date, the film details with poignancy the true tale of two Port Authority police officers (Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena) who were in the Twin Towers when […]

2006 Movies about underdog athletes might be inspirational, but rarely are they inspired. Even so, “Invincible” is better than most. It’s stuffed with contrivance, all right, but this tale of gridiron heroics has genuine heart. It helps that the story happens to be true. In 1976, part-time Philadelphia bartender Vince Papale (Mark Wahlberg) pursued a […]

  2006   Hard-edged and razor-sharp, the first hour of Neil Marshall’s cave-set nail-biter is some of the most virtuosic horror filmmaking of the last 12 months “? an expertly mounted exercise in slowly dawning dread. “The Descent” wobbles mightily as its narrative winds down, but the restored, bleaker final shot comes close to redeeming […]

2006 Usually, the “unrated” label on is merely a marketing tool, but with “Jackass Number Two,” it’s a bona fide red flag. Anyone who saw the MTV series or the first movie knows what to expect: presumably drunken and gleefully stupid stunts and pranks. You either love it or hate it; I, against better judgment, […]

2006   If the idea of interrupting the climax of a film with an Applebee’s commercial or having an urbane, French, homosexual race-car driver discuss the finer points of “Highlander” with a hero who’s dumber than a set of Craftsman tools doesn’t strike you as pants-peeingly hilarious, then “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” […]

1966/2006   A claustrophobic nightmare filmed in razor’s edge close-up, Mike Nichols’ astonishing 1966 directorial debut, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” still shocks you some four decades later. Anchored by the powerhouse performances of then-couple Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, it’s a visceral adaptation of Edward Albee’s play that pins you to the wall and […]

2006 There probably aren’t many who would cop to liking Dane Cook’s intelligent meathead brand of stand-up; after all, this is a guy whose filmography is iffy at best (“Waiting …” and “Employee of the Month,” anyone?) and whose contributions to serial television (the thuddingly dull “Tourgasm”) are barely worth surfing past. Still, Cook exudes […]

1975/2006 Creepy and disquietingly funny, “Grey Gardens,” David and Albert Maysles’ crack’d-mirror biography of the Beales “? Big Edie and Little Edie “? anticipates the bare-all aesthetic of modern-day reality TV, but does so with a grace and respect that “The Real World” wouldn’t dare attempt.   A film custom-built for cult status (indeed, everyone […]

2006   A purifying masterpiece of pain and anger, Spike Lee’s devastating dissection of the Hurricane Katrina debacle is one of 2006’s best films and a stirring document of sickening governmental indifference. Spread over four hours and originally broadcast in two parts on HBO on the first anniversary of the storm striking the Gulf Coast, […]

2006 Perhaps I judged “Miami Vice” too harshly earlier this year “? Michael Mann’s consummate skill at evoking the twilit netherworld of cops and robbers was lost amid heightened expectations and what felt like a rather flabby missed opportunity, a splintering summer tent-pole flick.   Revisiting the film on DVD, particularly via this extended “director’s […]