Searchers, The

There is a scene in October Sky, directed by Joe Johnston, when the four “Rocket Boys” from Coalwood, West Virginia., inspired by the sight of Sputnik streaking through the night sky, are setting off one of their rockets. On a sylvan road beside the launch site there appears an original, 1958 Corvette convertible in red…

A mildly amusing exercise in progressive nostalgia that has been much overpraised

What art can there be in the portrayal of that which we have no business witnessing?

The Gingerbread Man, directed by Robert Altman from a story by John Grisham is a kind of cross between Deliverance and Fatal Attraction—that is a meditation on how bad things happen to nice yuppies when they fall victim to wily backwoodsmen or “white trash tramps” or various sorts of throwbacks still lurking around the edges…

Wild America by William Dear is an engaging kiddie movie, supposedly based on the true story of a family of prominent naturalist-filmmakers, which will provide some wholesome thrills with its peeks at life and wildlife through the eyes of three boys growing up in Arkansas in the late 1960s. Unfortunately, Dear is not content to…

The 12 year-old eponymous hero of Stephen Daldry’s Billy Elliot, played by Jamie Bell, is made to say more than once that “just ‘cause I like ballet it doesn’t mean I’m a poof.” Sounds reasonable to me. But the film itself has a different story to tell. Both the introduction of Billy’s cross-dressing schoolboy friend,…