Titanic (1997)
For me, James Cameron’s Titanic has always been a tale of two halves. The first half — the setup — is schmaltzy and not particularly well written. The second — the disaster movie — is balls-out,...
Tagged: Kathy Bates
Midnight in Paris (2011)
Owen Wilson stars as a Hollywood hack screenwriter named Gil, traveling to his favorite city, Paris, with his fiancée Inez (McAdams) and her parents, John (Fuller) and Helen (Kennedy). Paris brings out the romanticized notions of...
Fred Claus (2007)
The proverbial lumps of coal (boy, isn’t this phrase becoming a trite cliché for movie critics?) called the family Christmas movie get trotted out toward the end of almost every year. For every good...
Failure to Launch (2006)
Here’s a movie title that practically writes my review for me. Interminably silly, Failure to Launch is a go-with-the-flow kind of comedy that has its share of laughs and smart ideas, and yet, sometimes it...
The Late Shift (1996)
The Late Shift is a made-for-HBO feature film docudrama, based on the book by Bill Carter (who adapted this into a screenplay), that aims to give us an inside peek at the two forces...
Around the World in 80 Days (2004)
Very loosely based on the classic Jules Verne novel, and made into a movie more than once already (most notably in 1956 with David Niven), Around the World in 80 Days is an old-fashioned adventure in...
Prelude to a Kiss (1992)
Prelude to a Kiss is a film that is difficult to recommend, for the very simple reason that it contains a surprise in the story that you’ll either love or you’ll hate, depending on...
White Palace (1990)
WHITE PALACE is bolstered by a novel idea for a romance, gaining much of its freshness from material that isn’t often explored in most love stories made in Hollywood, or anywhere else for that matter. ...
About Schmidt (2002)
I’m beginning to think that if Alexander Payne were to write and direct a film about the process of bee pollination, it would still be one of the best films of the year. Of...
The Waterboy (1998)
A 31-year-old waterboy (Sandler, The Wedding Singer) is continuously ridiculed by the college football team and is ultimately fired by his coach (Reed, Smokey and the Bandit 3) when he acts out. He gets a new job...