Email Author Dennis Lim

2004 Stories by Dennis Lim

• Double Exposure

  published September 7, 2004

  Two undercover scenarios fused into one tense, tail-chasing whole, the Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs recharged a slumping movie... More >>

• Film

  published August 31, 2004

  American cinephiles know Alan Clarke best as the director of Elephant, the film that provided the title—not to mention the formal and... More >>

• The Legend of Drunken Master

  published August 3, 2004

  Arriving at our interview late, disheveled, and visibly hungover, cinematographer Christopher Doyle immediately orders a beer: "It's a bar," he... More >>

• Reality Bites

  published July 27, 2004

  A digital-video shark-attack flick that its filmmakers shot on weekends and while on vacation in the Caribbean, Open Water emerged from a... More >>

• Misinterpretation of Dreams

  published July 20, 2004

  World cinema's favorite grindhouse workhorse, Takashi Miike, continues to expel his speedball fantasies at a rate of about seven movies per year.... More >>

• The Wild Munch

  published July 20, 2004

  The pot odyssey gone melting-pot, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle takes a torch to the model-minority myth—or more precisely, it... More >>

• Film

  published July 13, 2004

  Donnie Darko's passage from Sundance ruin to midnight-movie religion is an underdog feat worthy of its hero. Trust distributors Newmarket,... More >>

• Repetition Compulsion: An Endlessly Mutating J-Horror Flick

  published July 13, 2004

  A curious experiment in chain-yanking horror-movie dynamics, Ju-on: The Grudge performs the ratchet-release-repeat trick with such... More >>

• Living in Oblivion

  published July 13, 2004

  Chief among its insinuating pleasures, Alex Garland's spectral new novella drains the element of surprise from the most primitive of trick... More >>

• Film

  published June 29, 2004

  Confined to her New York loft since losing her leg in an accident, depressed agoraphobe Anne (French art-house star Nathalie Richard) silently... More >>

• Film

  published June 22, 2004

  A coy sexual-awakening vignette acquires home-movie texture and sociological flavor in Rémi Lange's The Road to Love. For reasons as... More >>

• From Dawn Till Dusk

  published June 22, 2004

  Like most artifacts that defined a period and a generation, Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise (1995) is a film that viewers of a certain... More >>

• French Maverick Looks for Utopia, Locates Brave New World

  published June 15, 2004

  French director Alain Guiraudie's No Rest for the Brave is a deadpan, volatile shape-shifter that utterly defies taxonomy. Morphing from a... More >>

• Quadruple-Nerd Score: Scrabble Nuts' National Smackdown

  published June 1, 2004

  An amusing and slightly alarming Scrabble-freak portrait, Word Wars serves as a cautionary sequel to last year's Spellbound. What... More >>

• Cold Comfort

  published May 25, 2004

  Despite two thumbs up from Al Gore and John McCain, The Day After Tomorrow is not about to win any converts to the environmental cause. As... More >>

• Mother Superior: Screenwriter Hanif Kureishi Helps the Aged

  published May 25, 2004

  "When I was a kid, I wrote about young boys in velvet trousers taking drugs and going to parties," says Hanif Kureishi. "Now I write about old... More >>

• How Soon Is Then?

  published May 18, 2004

  "You're still here," Morrissey observed over an adoring roar at a sold-out Apollo show recently. "And I'm still here—what's left of me,... More >>

• 60 Going on 69

  published May 18, 2004

  A dry-eyed account of an English grandmother's affair with a strapping carpenter half her age (who also happens to be her daughter's married... More >>

• Surviving Desire

  published May 4, 2004

  "The clocks aren't working here," someone remarks late in André Téchiné's Strayed, and indeed, for most of its... More >>

• Film

  published May 4, 2004

  Set in a dim, dingy tenement apartment, The 24th Day is a stifling two-hander that waffles through a succession of dutiful reversals, only... More >>

• Unsafe At Any Size

  published April 27, 2004

  Appetite suppressant, frat-boy stunt, and anti-corporate headbutt all in one juicy if not always wholesome package, Super Size Me records... More >>

• In His Skin: The View From a Late Folkie's Bedroom Window

  published April 27, 2004

  Save for a few childhood home movies, there exists no film footage of Nick Drake. A Skin Too Few, Jeroen Berkvens's whispery portrait of... More >>

• No Props: Movie-Mad Cautionary Tale Proves Mild at Heart

  published April 13, 2004

  Like so many movie protagonists before him, the hero of Rhinoceros Eyes has a hard time distinguishing between fantasy and reality—no... More >>

• Film

  published April 13, 2004

  A genre insurrectionary in journeyman garb, the Japanese director Kinji Fukasaku (1930-2003) only began to receive international recognition late... More >>

• Much Better Than That Thing With Kevin What's-His-Name

  published April 6, 2004

  Tom Perrotta's Little Children makes abundantly clear that the most difficult thing about being a parent isn't the kids—it's the other... More >>