Acclaimed director Steve Soderbergh makes the first uninspired decision of his career by remaking the 1960 Rat Rack caper dud into another caper dud without the Rat Pack. The cast is game and attempt to ride out the script on their star power but the fun wears thin very quickly.
For once the Coen Brothers fall short with their forced take on ‘The Odyssey’ which, like its title, has the feeling of an in-joke that the audience is left out of.
Formally pitch-black director Neil LaBute executes a near perfect 180 with this light-hearted, albeit occasionally violent, modern fairytale.
South Korean director Myung-se Lee takes a much-needed crack at redefining John Woo’s territory in a tale of a driven cop willing to bend every rule to get his man. The results are at times exhilarating but the plot, or lack thereof, cannot support the thrills.
Roman Polanski’s relentlessly plodding story of a book detective tracing the mystery of raising Satan. No, really.
Billed as the Russian ‘Matrix,’ this muddled mess about the forces of (what else?) dark and light can barely hold itself together long enough to rip-off far better science fiction movies.
Ironically, the most disappointing part of this Donald Goines adaptation is not the sub-MTV style direction by Spike Lee protégé Ernest Dickerson or the performances of DMX and David Arquette (though those are certainly liabilities), it’s the script itself, which alternates between urban clichés and rap lyrics.
Obvious, ham-handed attempt to capitalize on the success of ‘The Da Vinci Code’ follows a band of competing treasure hunters on the trail of an increasingly ludicrous series of clues left by the founding fathers. Everyone from star Nicholas Cage to the assistant Key Grip is on auto-pilot. Ironically clue-less.
Misguided attempt to make a quirky teen comedy set in a timewarped section of Idaho featuring a hero who only gets more socially inept as the movie progresses. Writer-director Jared Hess tries for John Hughes by way of the Coen Brothers, but only comes up with one dull, unfunny non-sequitur after another.
Ray Liotta and Jason Patric are relentlessly effective in Joe Carnahan’s stylish but predictable look at the underside of drug enforcement.
