So dumb the crap of Brown Noel Vera It would be tempting to consider "The Da Vinci Code" a kind of corrective to "The Passion of the Christ," the kind of movie...
Geek tragedy Noel Vera Dennis Dugan's "The Benchwarmers"--oh hell, who are we kidding? This is garbage, the people who made this know it's garbage, the ...
Two French classics and a lovely Filipino film Noel Vera The 2006 French Film Festival opens with a platter of recent Gallic offerings and a few classics, but...
Smooth operator By Noel Vera Spike Lee's "Inside Man" isn't the work of an outsider, the kind of iconoclast filmmaker that Spike used to declare himself to be...
An American hilarity Noel Vera Courtney Solomon's "An American Haunting" right off takes a high spot on my list of the five most awful pictures this year, even...
The Last "Prairie" Show Noel Vera Robert Altman's "A Prairie Home Companion" (2006) is flat-out wonderful, and he could do worse than end his career on this ...
Little boy blue Noel Vera With "Superman Returns" Bryan Singer--who I've always thought more clever than talented--pretty much remakes the 1978 movie with ...
Is it safe? Noel Vera Bill Condon's "Kinsey" (2004) at first sight was your standard- issue, well-made, intelligently tasteful biopic, in a year that teemed...
Shellfish buffet Noel Vera My dear Mr. Verbinski; Greetings from the captain of the "Black Pearl," and congratulations on your commercial success. It has been...
Nacho funny Noel Vera It is supposed to be a comedy, this pelicula of Jared Hess, but it is false and impure where it should be good and true. It is featuring...
The poor dozers Noel Vera Talk about pointless--why bring the overblown, overextended musical remake of a fairly satisfying Mel Brooks comedy to Manila screens...
A little article I wrote for Senses of Cinema on Kurosawa Kyoshi's film: http://tinyurl.com/hvt2e Excerpt Looking at Kurosawa Kiyoshi's "Kairo" (Pulse, 2001)...
Guerilla warfare Noel Vera Isao Takahata's "Pom Poko" (The Raccoon War, 1994) starts out with a little song where children call on the tanuki (Japanese raccoon...
Dumdumland Noel Vera It's hard to guess what kind of thinking went into the making of this particular car crash. "We'll take Richard Price's novel and turn it...
Snakes gone wild Noel Vera It's not exactly the kind of motion picture meant to extend or develop the potentialities of cinema as a medium of artistic ...
Lost movie Noel Vera "The Lost City" represents sixteen years of director-producer- composer-lead actor Andy Garcia's life, devoted to the attempt to bring the...
Shack attack Noel Vera Gil Kenan's "Monster House" is amusing enough, a mix of Steven Spielberg suburbia, Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window," the "Evil Dead"...
Snicker man Noel Vera It's difficult to understand why anyone thought a remake of "The Wicker Man"--the classic thriller about a police officer who lands on a...
Crud Noel Vera Mark Neveldin and Brian Taylor's "Crank" has a premise so dumb it's brilliant, or could have been brilliant: a man named Chev Chelios (Jason...
Better than "Brokeback" Noel Vera Auraeus Solito's "Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros" (The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros, 2005), the first Filipino film to ...
Stumble Noel Vera Anne Fletcher's "Step Up" (2006) is anything but--a clichéd, unimaginative retelling of a story as old as time, or at least as old as boiled...
Lino Brocka's Insiang (1976) <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077740/> --his masterpiece, in my opinion--is scheduled to screen at The New York Film Festival...
Failure to launch Noel Vera "Flyboys" is handsomely produced and actually looks as if the filmmakers had read a page or two of history--the Lafayette ...
Evolution in action Noel Vera I believe the worst charge one can level at Martin Scorsese for what he's done in his latest film "The Departed" (2006) is that...
The New York Times' film critic Dave Kehr on Manila By Night (Ishmael Bernal, 1980) and Ina, Kapatid, Anak (Mother, Sister, Daughter, Lino Brocka, 1979) ...
Plod by Noel Vera Jim Sonzero's "Pulse" (2006) has anything but. Like a number of recent horror remakes--"The Ring," "Dark Water," "The Wicker Man," "The...
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