Articles tagged "mark wahlberg"

Decade-Dense: The 60 Most Memorable Films of 1999 Feature

Part 3: The Sixth Sense to Fight Club (August - October 1999)

by PopMatters Staff

[25.Mar.09] :. Films that have left a lasting impression on their creators (M. Night Shyamalan, Sam Mendes, David Fincher) make up the majority of Part Three of our Films of 1999 overview.

Decade-Dense: The 60 Most Memorable Films of 1999

PopMatters Picks: The Best TV, Film, and DVD of 2008 Feature

OMG - The 20 Worst Films of 2008

by PopMatters Staff

[15.Jan.09] :. There's bad, and then there's 2008 level bad. You know this list is looking down into a deep dark bottomless pit of cinematic despair when Mike Myers' shameful Love Guru didn't even make the Top 20!

PopMatters Picks: The Best TV, Film, and DVD of 2008

Film DVD Review

The Happening

by Jake Meaney

[10.Nov.08] :. Watching this is rather like watching the grass grow. And blow in the wind. And trees. Bushes. Hedges. Blowing. You get the idea.

Recent DVD reviews

The PopMatters Fall 2008 Movie Preview Feature

Talk, Talk, Talk: October 2008

by Bill Gibron

[10.Sep.08] :. What studio suit thought this was a good idea? With four months to schedule your high priced efforts, you instead unload almost 30 overpriced pictures on an unsuspecting movie audience.

The PopMatters Fall 2008 Movie Preview

Film Review

The Happening

by Todd R. Ramlow

[13.Jun.08] :. The Happening features an effectively stylized physical environment: rarely have clouds drifting overhead and wind blowing through trees and a sunny day been filmed so ominously.

Recent Film reviews

Short Ends and Leader

Mess Hysteria: The Happening vs. The Signal

by Bill Gibron

[12.Jun.08] :. Newsweek Magazine must still be smarting. Back in 2002, as Signs was gearing up for its box office assault, the publication called M. Night Shyamalan “The Next Spielberg”....

Short Ends and Leader

The Return of the Popcorn Circus: June 2008

by Bill Gibron

[29.Apr.08] :. If May almost tent-poled itself out of existence, June will be even worse. After all, are audiences really ready for 13 major release in less than two months -- with more to come?

We Own the Night

by Cynthia Fuchs

[12.Oct.07] :. You can see -- though the brothers take a few more scenes to catch up -- that each envies the other: Joe wants Bobby's seeming independence, Bobby wants daddy's approval.

Part 5: The Return of the Auteur

by PopMatters Staff

[22.Jun.07] :. That noise you heard near the start of the new millennium was the creative din of a brash new breed of filmmakers tearing down the traditions of mainstream moviemaking. Their motion picture mission statements -- including the ones featured on this list -- remain the rulebook for new generations of anxious film artists.

Shooter (2007)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[23.Mar.07] :. While Swagger describes himself modestly, he's also one of those highly trained government instruments whose post-trauma mission in life is vengeance.

With ‘Shooter,’ Wahlberg cements his place as an A-list actor

by Terry Lawson [Detroit Free Press (MCT)]

[19.Mar.07] :. Mark Wahlberg refuses to be cool about being nominated for his first Oscar for his supporting role in “The Departed.” “It was absolutely without question the biggest thrill of my...

The Pay Off: The Best Film of 2006

by PopMatters Staff

[11.Jan.07] :. For many of the movies on PopMatters' 2006 list of the year's best films, it is clear that a heavy personal and professional stake was riding on the final product.

The Departed (2006)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[6.Oct.06] :. The Departed's understanding of identity is deeply rooted in place and culture -- South Boston, Irish Catholicism, masculine rituals.

Invincible (2006)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[25.Aug.06] :. The hard-charging practice and game scenes take you onto the field and slam you into large, shoulder-padded men.

Four Brothers (2005)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[5.Jan.06] :. 'I grew up in sunny southern California, and I'm not used to snow,' says John Singleton. 'I wanted to do a movie with snow in it, so here it is.'"

Four Brothers (2005)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[12.Aug.05] :. In between the guilt-tripping and the domestic melodrama, the boys argue over priorities.

I Heart Huckabees: 2-Disc Special Edition (2004)

by Bill Gibron

[23.Mar.05] :. The Special Edition is loaded with so much self-referential material and 'oh so clever' concepts that they threaten to make the movie into its own cult object.

I Heart Huckabees: 2-Disc Special Edition (2004)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[28.Feb.05] :. As hard as he tries, Albert can't quite keep up with the Jaffes' questions, let alone their answers.

I Heart Huckabees (2004)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[1.Oct.04] :. Albert is again faced with basic questions: Are we really 'all connected'? How can 'everything be the same even if it's different'?"

The Italian Job (2003)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[29.Aug.03] :. As soon as John utters the words 'last job' to his darling girl, his fate (like the film's) is sealed.

The Italian Job (2003)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[29.May.03] :. As soon as John utters the words 'last job' to his darling girl, his fate (like the film's) is sealed.

The Truth About Charlie (2002)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[31.Oct.02] :. It conjures a perverse and giddy grace.

The Yards (2000)

by Cynthia Fuchs

In 'The Yards', Mark Wahlberg again plays an emotionally damaged young tough, but this time his entire environment is orchestrated to reflect that character, dark, sad, and heavy with non-options.

Three Kings (1999)

by Cynthia Fuchs

Puke green bile, dark blood, convulsing pink. tissue. A close-up shot following a bullet's path into and through internal organs is a frankly terrible image. In most war movies, bullets do tend to fly. But you only see their external effects: blood spurts, faces contort, handheld cameras zig and zag, explosions-effects create aestheticized, often slo-mo, chaos. In David O. Russell's Three Kings, however, you see the insides: the bullet rushes forward, stops, lodging in mangled, throbbing flesh while fluids accumulate. It's visceral and immediate. It's surreal and nasty.

Rock Star (2001)

by Mike Ward

It's disappointing that 'Rock Star'... ends up with such a boring reassertion of straightness, not only with regard to sexual orientation, but also with regard to lifestyles and values more generally.

Planet of the Apes (2001)

by Josh Jones

As Tim Burton's new version of 'Planet of the Apes' demonstrates in many ways, some subtle, some not so, the recycling of cultural milestones is not simply a marketing device, but a way to rejuvenate cultural mythology, be it science fiction or religious fable.

Planet of the Apes (2001)

by Ben Varkentine

Tim Burton should never have been given this assignment. There are no humans in his films, which can impress, but never move us.

The Perfect Storm (2000)

by Mike Ward

In a coincidence I assume is meaningless, Das Boot has bubbled up twice this summer movie season, after snoozing for close to 20 years. First evoked in the backhanded homage of Jonathan...

The Perfect Storm (2000)

by Cynthia Fuchs.'

Here’s how the world ends: Marky Mark afloat on a dark and turbid sea, alone and Pip-like, channeling his true devotion to his loyal girlfriend back on shore. “There’s no...

The Corruptor (1999)

by Cynthia Fuchs

'You don't change Chinatown. Chinatown changes you.' So warns Detective Nick Chen (Chow Yun Fat), upon meeting his squeaky clean newbie partner, Danny Wallace (Mark Wahlberg) in The Corruptor. And so persists the myth of Chinatown. Alluring, strange, and always inscrutable, in the movies it remains an uncrackable bastion of Otherness.