Anand

I’d better do two reviews here:

If you are Indian, and a fan of “Bollywood” movies … GO SEE THIS MOVIE!

If you are not … AVOID IT LIKE LEPROSY!

We managed precisely 37 minutes before we had to shut it down. … and yet, at the IMDb ... Read more »

Amores Perros

Translated, roughly, “Love’s a Bitch.” I don’t mean it as a putdown in any way when I say this is a sort of Mexican Pulp Fiction. The director is a fan of Tarantino, but not a slavish imitator. He takes the elements of interconnected stories, ... Read more »

The Americanization of Emily

This is one of those movies that made a great impression on me when it was new. I was a senior in high school and hadn’t really thought much about military service. I was going to be a student, I’d have a deferment, and surely the war in Southeast Asia couldn’t go on much longer. (I didn’t know it but I’d spend the next eight years of my life fighting the ... Read more »

American Wedding

This has to qualify as a guilty pleasure. I decided I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, but wanted to start with the first in the series, American Pie. One of the wisest decisions I ever made, because Wedding is the weakest of the series, not really much good at all. But though I would never recommend these ... Read more »

American Violet

If there is still a thinking being out there somewhere who believes the so-called “War on Drugs” is a good idea, this movie should disabuse them of that silly notion. As The Onion pointed out years ago, the war is over. Drugs won. Far beyond their ability to destroy lives ... Read more »

American Splendor

The quite amusing story of Harvey Pekar, the file clerk whose life was turned into a comic book by a series of underground artists, among them R. Crumb. It’s as unlikely as a story can get, and it’s all true. Recommended. Not by me. Harvey Pekar is an obnoxious ... Read more »

American Movie

This is the chronicle of the creation of what might be the worst film ever made: Coven, by Mark Borchardt. (Pronounced COVE-en, so it won’t rhyme with oven, for reasons known only to the director.) Borchardt is a loser in ... Read more »

An American in Paris

Leslie Caron got her very tardy and long-deserved star on Hollywood Boulevard today (12/8/09), so we were inspired to watch her debut film again. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen it, but it’s a bunch. In many respects it could qualify as the best Hollywood musical ever made. But so could Read more »

American Gangster

I guess my main complaint about this is stylistic. How dark and murky can a movie get before you don’t have any idea what’s going on? Many directors have been exploring this question in recent years, and here Ridley Scott, who’s always been dark, almost achieves nirvana in some scenes: a completely black screen. In every indoor scene where it is possible, he ... Read more »

The American Friend

The last of the four Ripley movies we set out to see (Ripley Under Ground was filmed in 2005 with Barry Pepper, but it’s not available on video). Directed by Wim Wenders, who’s usually pretty good, but this one is a mess. For one thing, Ripley is barely in it until the ... Read more »