Dutt's Entertainment: ten immortal Indian musicals When most people think of Indian movies, they think of "Bollywood," of men and women in colorful costumes,...
Forgotten masterpiece Noel Vera Akira Kurosawa's 1951 film "The Idiot," his adaptation of Dostoevsky's novel, is pretty much forgotten now, or is rarely ...
I Yam What I Yam By Noel Vera Max and Dave Fleischer took E.C. Segar's popular cartoon character "Popeye the Sailor" and ran away with it, creating a series of...
Gobble, gobble Cuaron introduced a bit of jazz to his film, and it was a breath of fresh air and sophistication; Newell mainly relies on John William's usual...
Little girl lost Noel Vera "Domino" is crap, that's more or less a given--it's directed by Tony Scott, after all--the real question is, how badly does it reek?...
Passable Noel Vera Ben Younger's latest movie "Prime" is like a younger version of one of Woody Allen's romantic comedies, which isn't as bad as you'd think,...
Matters little Noel Vera It's been whispered in the halls: Disney has not been looking too healthy recently. Michael Eisner has been bumped off as the ...
Ida Lupino: hard, fast, and beautiful Noel Vera Ida Lupino was a Hollywood anomaly, a woman who wasn't just a lovely or talented actress, but a filmmaker with...
Smog Noel Vera It's not as if John Carpenter's "The Fog" was a classic, or the best work Carpenter ever did. The movie turned on the premise that a fog ...
Monkey see, monkey do Noel Vera You could imagine Peter Jackson as a nine-year-old, boy seeing Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack's 1933 "King Kong" for...
Unfortunately I've never seen Tony Perez's Sa North Diversion Road onstage, but it's easy to see why this is a perennial theater favorite, constantly being...
A creditable "Chronicle" Noel Vera C.S. Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," first of seven tales about the land of Narnia, finally gets the...
Here's the introduction I wrote for Rotterdam's Critic After Dark program: http://tinyurl.com/a2j84 The website is a bit confusing to navigate so you need to...
Some thoughts on re-viewing classic and recent Filipino films in my Rotterdam Critic After Dark programme (as published in the online film magazine Criticine):...
An excerpt: "Film critiquing is a curious profession. We all know that it, just as is the case with most activities that writers engage themselves in, is...
A dish best served Noel Vera If "Schindler's List" was Spielberg's serious take on the Holocaust, "Amistad" his take on slavery, "The Color Purple" his take on...
Come to where the flavor is Noel Vera It's the most Oscar-nominated film this year, won major awards in the Golden Globes, been praised by most critics (the...
Also available are Ishmael Bernal's "Relasyon" (An Affair, 1982; one of his best), Lino Brocka's "Macho Dancer" (1988; not one of his best-- but second-best...
Oil's well that ends well Noel Vera Steve Gaghan's "Syriana," based on the memoirs of Robert Baer (a former CIA case officer who worked in the Middle East), is...
Little boy blue Noel Vera "Capote"--about Truman Capote's five-year quest to write a book on the killing of a Kansas family, the friendship he develops with...
Doing the right thing Noel Vera "16 Blocks," Richard Donner's unpromisingly titled new action flick (it sounds like a movie about bricklayers) is, in effect,...
From David Kehr's blog: http://davekehr.com/?p=73 I've seen it happen in Manila; what was once a thriving industry churning out over a hundred and fifty films...
Doggie style Noel Vera The 1959 "Shaggy Dog," about a boy cursed with an ancient spell that would change him back and forth from the shape of a sheepdog, was ...
Ultraidiotic Noel Vera Kurt Wimmer's "Ultraviolet" (you keep wanting to insert an 'n' in the title) is about as stripped-down, no-nonsense as it gets, which ...
Four films Noel Vera Four films, by ascending levels of quality: Paul Haggis' "Crash" has half a dozen characters ramming into each other, and instead of them...
Rant Noel Vera I like the theory that operas actually need their relatively melodramatic plots. It's the nature of the medium to heighten emotions, and nothing...
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