0ur opinion: :Most critics couldn't get behind Bill Murray's modern retelling of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, finding it too unfocused at times and not nearly wicked enough. Still, if you're a Murray fan, you have to enjoy his deliciously nasty portrayal of the world's meanest TV executive, who has his cathartic moment one cold Christmas night in New York City. The various ghosts lead him on a ghost-town tour of Manhattan, with stops at holidays past, present, and ...
0ur opinion: essential video:Steven Spielberg and George Lucas's 1981 resurrection of the Saturday-matinee adventure genre was deservedly popular, and kicked off a successful trilogy. Set in 1936, this first feature introduces Harrison Ford as lndiana Jones, an archaeologist and adventurer whose quests for rare antiquities frequently find him running from one menace or another. Raiders finds Dr. Jones in the middle of a Nazi plot to use the mysterious powers of the Ark of the Covenant to win ...
0ur opinion: :Paul Newman directed this poetic, sunlight- and memory-drenched film version of Tennessee Williams's classic memory play. The casting is surprisingly adept, considering that several of the performers would seem to be too old for their roles. John Malkovich plays Williams's stand-in, Tom Wingfield, a dreamer who lives with his domineering mother Amanda (a luminous Joanne Woodward) and his fragile, limping sister Laura (Karen Allen). Mom wants nothing more than to marry off shy-flower Laura and keeps bugging ...
0ur opinion: :Paul Newman directed this poetic, sunlight- and memory-drenched film version of Tennessee Williams's classic memory play. The casting is surprisingly adept, considering that several of the performers would seem to be too old for their roles. John Malkovich plays Williams's stand-in, Tom Wingfield, a dreamer who lives with his domineering mother Amanda (a luminous Joanne Woodward) and his fragile, limping sister Laura (Karen Allen). Mom wants nothing more than to marry off shy-flower Laura and keeps bugging ...
0ur opinion:Description:lt's the early 1960s and fifth-grader Scotty Smalls (Tom Guiry) has just moved into town with his folks (Karen Allen and Denis Leary). Kids call him a dork—he can't even throw a baseball! But that changes when the leader of the neighborhood gang recruits him to play on the nearby sandlot field. lt's the beginning of a magical summer of baseball, wild adventures, first kisses, and fearsome confrontations with the dreaded Beast and its owner (James Earl ...
0ur opinion: :Setting out for the one last catch that will make up for a lackluster fishing season, Captain Billy Tyne (George Clooney) pushes his boat the Andrea Gail out to the waters of the Flemish Cap off Nova Scotia for what will be a huge swordfish haul. While his crew is gathering fish, three storm fronts (including a hurricane) collide to create a 'perfect storm' of colossal force, and Billy's path back to Gloucester, Massachusetts, takes them right ...
0ur opinion: :lt’s hard to imagine that a film with worldwide box office receipts topping $300 million worldwide could be labeled a disappointment, but some moviegoers considered lndiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the second installment in Steven Spielberg and George Lucas’ 1980s adventure trilogy, to be just that. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad effort; any collaboration between these two cinema giants (Spielberg directed, while Lucas provided the story and was executive producer) is bound to have ...
Usually we're fans of Logitech's gaming mice, but its highest-end G9 Laser Mouse is expensive, overly complex, and lacks the ergonomic thought we've come to expect. If you like to brag about dot-per-inch limits, perhaps the G9's 3,200dpi laser will be enough to sell you, but for the price, we expect the design to match.
Small and light enough for a shirt pocket, Samsung's Helix YX-M1 is a one-stop audio entertainment center with an XM radio, a digital music player, and room for 50 hours of tunes, but it comes up short on battery life.
It's a measure of the ongoing popularity of Karen and Richard Carpenter that the 2002 release of this video collection in DVD format comes nearly 20 years after Karen's death. The duo's heyday mostly preceded the MTV age, so this 15-song, 55-minute anthology is a bit of a visual hodgepodge, composed of still photos, footage from TV shows and concerts, promo clips, fleeting attempts at conceptual videos, and other weirdness (film of Carpenters albums being pressed on the assembly line? Hey, whatever). You'll see an array of bad haircuts and outfits and a whole lot of lip-syncing, but in the end, it's the music that counts. And the Carpenters' signature sound, with its brilliant arrangements, its lush harmonies, and Karen's exquisite alto voice, was easy-listening pop at its finest. If nothing else, Carpenters: Gold offers another chance to hear that music in all its glory. --Sam Graham
With a gentle tug at the heartstrings, Evelyn tells the true story of an imperfect father whose devotion brought much-needed change to rigid Irish law. It's a labor of love for star and coproducer Pierce Brosnan, who brings just the right touch of Everyman charm to his role as Desmond Doyle, a struggling Dublin tradesman, father of three, and chronic pub-crawler whose wife abandons their family the day after Christmas, 1953. Desmond's a loving father who's boyishly irresponsible; Irish law dictates the removal of his children to stern Catholic orphanages, and his battle for custody is aided by two lawyers (Stephen Rea, Aidan Quinn) who seize this opportunity to revolutionize the courts. With straightforward, unobtrusive style, director Bruce Beresford draws fine performances from Brosnan, Julianna Margulies (as a barmaid who inspires Desmond's sobriety), and especially young Sophie Vavasseur in the title role as Desmond's bright, determined daughter. Sentimental without being saccharine, Evelyn is simple, well made, and bursting with genuine Irish spirit. --Jeff Shannon
