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Andy Klein

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Happy Gilmore Gets Serious

Adam Sandler is deliberately disturbing in Punch-Drunk Love

By Andy Klein
Oct 17, 2002

Punch-Drunk Love is a Paul Thomas Anderson film -- Paul Thomas Anderson of Magnolia and Boogie Nights fame. It is also an Adam Sandler film -- Adam Sandler of Little Nicky and Wedding Singer fame. In terms of story, it has far more in common with Sandler's previous work than...
Heart to Heart

Eastwood plays a detective with a bad ticker looking for the man who murdered his donor

By Andy Klein
Aug 8, 2002

Clint Eastwood's 23rd film as director, Blood Work, is another crime thriller in the mode of, but better than, True Crime (1998) and Absolute Power (1996), two of his last three films. More than these, however, it resembles In the Line of Fire (1993), the Eastwood vehicle directed by Wolfgang...
Promise?

Eric Schaeffer improves with Never Again by leaving himself out of it

By Andy Klein
Jul 25, 2002

Calling your film Never Again is like handing an ax to a critic and meekly placing your head on the chopping block. Will some of my colleagues write "Never See Never Again" or "Not Even Once, Let Alone Again" or "Another Eric Schaeffer film? Never Again!"? You betcha. The latter...
Wooing the White Guy

Nicolas Cage plays the real protagonist in World War II epic about Navajo codetalkers

By Andy Klein
Jun 13, 2002

The opening credit sequence of Windtalkers -- a montage of Monument Valley -- instantly invokes memories of the opening of John Woo's immediately previous film, Mission: Impossible II, in which Tom Cruise was dangling off a rock. It is the last moment of similarity between the two. Windtalkers is a...
Sleepless in Alaska

A frazzled Al Pacino tangles with a psychotic Robin Williams in Insomnia

By Andy Klein
May 23, 2002

The bad news for Memento fans is that Christopher Nolan's Insomnia is far less complex and challenging in form than the backward-edited art-house hit that sparked as much disdain as devotion among moviegoers last year. The good news for Memento-haters is that Insomnia is far less complex and challenging in...
Ol' Dirty Bastard

Hollywood Ending shows Woody Allen in obvious decline -- and delusion

By Andy Klein
May 2, 2002

Ten years after The Scandal -- and its negative effect on the size of his audiences and his power and independence -- Woody Allen broke his longtime avoidance of the Oscar telecast with his pro-New York stand-up shtick at this year's ceremony. The positive audience response suggested that all is...
Snoozie Q

Its heart is in the right place, but John Q. is too clumsy to make us care

By Andy Klein
Feb 21, 2002

Following his dazzling change-of-pace performance in Training Day, Denzel Washington returns to more familiar turf in another of his trademark roles as One of the Best Human Beings in the World in John Q. The opening scenes establish quickly (and a bit heavy-handedly) that John Q. Archibald is the finest...
Impressive Iris

Eyre excels in the gripping story of a writer's descent into Alzheimer's

By Andy Klein
Feb 14, 2002

After a long absence from American screens, British stage director Richard Eyre, best known for his agreeably nasty The Ploughman's Lunch in 1982, makes his return. Eyre's Iris is an alternately depressing and uplifting drama about Dame Iris Murdoch's descent into Alzheimer's disease and the heroic efforts of her husband,...
Moth-Eaten

In this tricked-up ghost story, the truth is way out there

By Andy Klein
Jan 24, 2002

Just a few decades ago, the American landscape, particularly the rural American landscape, was a site for huge looming things inducing strange visions in the locals, accompanied by horrifying screeching noises. It was a different world then, and, for lack of a better name, we called these things "drive-ins." Well,...
Hero and Villain

Miguel Piñero, and the film about him, capture the beautiful and the ugly

By Andy Klein
Jan 24, 2002

Miguel Piñero was poet, playwright and actor -- and thief, liar and junkie. If everyone has within them a mix of the beautiful and the ugly, few of us have either to the extremes Piñero did. He was in Sing Sing by his early twenties, the iconic leader of New...
Get a Clue

Robert Altman revives his rep with an old-fashioned murder mystery

By Andy Klein
Jan 10, 2002

Who would have guessed that 31 years after M*A*S*H, the film that made Robert Altman's reputation, he would still be turning out movies as good as his latest release, Gosford Park? Full of the director's usual energy, powered by the sense of controlled chaos that marks all of his ensemble...

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Andy Klein