Arts & Culture

  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   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 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 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 […]

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 […]

2001-2005/2006 The beauty of long-form, episodic television shows is that writers are allowed to give characters room to breathe, letting narratives develop like the most satisfying novels; few hour-long dramas better dealt with the absurdity and gravity of death than Alan Ball’s “Six Feet Under.” A thematic extension, of sorts, of Ball’s acclaimed “American Beauty,” […]

2006 “Beerfest,” an over-the-top raunchfest starring five schlubs who pound brewskis like Olympic athletes, is every bit as stupid as you’d expect “? but God help you, you’ll laugh anyway.   Rebounding from the humorless misfire of “Club Dread,” the boys of Broken Lizard deliver dumb giggles as the hard-chugging, frog-masturbating quintet who must defend […]

2006         The last first-season episode of the Showtime anthology series to hit DVD, “Masters of Horror: The Fair-Haired Child” is directed by William Malone, whose credits include only one decent horror film (the “House on Haunted Hill” remake) and twice as many awful ones (“FeardotCom,” “Creature”).   The 55-minute mini-movie entails the […]