Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
Similar2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Aliens (1986), Back to the Future Part II (1989), Back to the Future Part III (1990), Batman Begins (2005), Beverly Hills Cop III (1994), Blade Runner (1982), Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006), Con Air (1997), Dr. No (1962), Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), Fargo (1996), Forrest Gump (1994), From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), Mars Attacks! (1996), Men in Black II (2002), Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), North by Northwest (1959), Ocean's Eleven (1960), On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006), Snakes on a Plane (2006), Star Trek: First Contact (1996), Star Trek: Generations (1994), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), The Matrix Reloaded (2003), The Matrix Revolutions (2003), Twelve Monkeys (1995), Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), Wild at Heart (1990), You Only Live Twice (1967),
StarringRebecca Romijn,
StudioNew Line Cinema,
An overview of the diverse features selected to screen at this year's Austin Film Festival.
This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the work being covered here wouldn't exist.
A cycle rickshaw, adorned with a Texas flag billowing in the wind, whizzes by while blaring a Luke Combs tune. Massive murals of Willie Nelson and Post Malone gaze down on passersby like the eyes of T.J. Eckleburg. A man in a Blue Lives Matter shirt waltzes past a "PROTECT TRANS KIDS" sign planted on the lawn of a Catholic Church. Welcome to Austin, Texas, a Southern hotspot that, for the final weekend of October 2023, wasn't just home to these and other oddball sights, but also the backdrop for the 30th edition of the Austin Film Festival. Though not as world-famous as the Toronto International Film Festival or Cannes, Austin's annual ode to cinema is still a much-ballyhooed event attended by freelance journalists, aspiring screenwriters, iconic filmmakers, and everyone in between. Continue Reading →
Unstable
Unstable appears to be a deeply personal show for lead actor and co-creator Rob Lowe. After all, it revolves around a father/son duo played by Lowe and his real-life son, John Owen Lowe. Rob Lowe’s headlined worse stuff than this, for sure. Nonetheless, you’d think a series that seems rooted in something this personal would be more engaging to watch. At least, it might take some bold swings. Tragically, Unstable is a mostly just average comedy that leaves little in the way of an impression for good or ill. Continue Reading →
The Andy Warhol Diaries
There shouldn’t be anything more to say about the New York City art scene circa 1965 to 1985. True, it’s an exciting subject, depicting an era that was a unique combination of glamorous and trashy, inclusive and deeply snobby, and something we’ll never see again. Nevertheless, it’s been exhausted, a tragic, oft-told tale of excess decimated by drug use and AIDS. And we certainly seem to know all we could ever know about Andy Warhol, the father of that scene, who made superficiality and detachment seem fashionable. The Andy Warhol Diaries, however, is a rare, moving look at the person behind the carefully cultivated persona, who craved traditional domesticity while being drawn to the frenetic downtown party circuit at the same time. Continue Reading →
Wayne's World
When we talk about what movies “couldn’t be made today,” it’s less about what tweaks would need to be employed to make them for a contemporary audience, and more about whining that P.C. culture has killed comedy and it’s never coming back. It also doesn’t take into account that pre-2000s comedy wasn’t entirely a lawless land of misogyny and casual homophobia. There are quite a few films from that era that could easily be made today, just as they were then, with virtually no tweaking or updating for an audience of “snowflakes” that doesn’t actually exist. One of those was Penelope Spheeris’s Wayne’s World, released thirty years ago today. Continue Reading →
The Outsiders
Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 coming-of-age drama The Outsiders, adapted from S.E. Hinton’s classic novel by the same name, is a dreamy, soft endeavor. Despite the gritty world in which the film’s protagonist Ponyboy Curtis (C. Thomas Howell) exists, the film is a surprisingly sweet, earnest and vulnerable in a way that from some angles could be considered cloying, but ultimately succeeds in capturing the overwhelming and all-encompassing emotions of adolescence. Continue Reading →