Email Author Laura Sinagra

2005 Stories by Laura Sinagra

• 'Rumor Has It'

  published December 13, 2005

  Rumor had it this was gonna be a stinker, and it is. The premise itself, which has been criticized for its weirdly incestuous overtones, isn't... More >>

• ABCs in Africa: Dubious Doc Follows Inner City Kids to Kenya

  published November 22, 2005

  In the post–Hoop Dreams era of docs like Born Into Brothels, there seems to be a run on films about at-risk kids availed of... More >>

• High and Dry: A Nuanced Look at Working-Class Addicts

  published November 15, 2005

  Like Junebug, this year's other laconic regionalist gem, Debra Granik's Down to the Bone lets stirring location shots convey some... More >>

• A History of Violence

  published November 8, 2005

  The video game released in conjunction with 50 Cent's movie is called Bulletproof. The flick itself could easily be called... More >>

• Harvey and Bob Divorce From Disney With Infidelity Thriller

  published November 1, 2005

  It's probably fitting that the Weinstein brothers' first release after their gory split with Disney deals with shattered marital fidelity and the... More >>

• 'Three of Hearts: A Postmodern Family'

  published October 11, 2005

  This well-told doc follows nine years in the lives of a gay couple and the woman they invited to share their relationship. When we meet this happy... More >>

• Almost Shameless

  published October 4, 2005

  Reviews of Elizabethtown will begin in one of two ways: The reviewer will compare Cameron Crowe's latest to the bizarrely similar Garden... More >>

• 'Nine Lives'

  published October 4, 2005

  There's something confining about the title of Rodrigo García's Nine Lives, a series of vignettes on mundanely horrific episodes in... More >>

• Hanson Dons Heels for Tepid, Well-Acted Chick-Lit Adaptation

  published September 27, 2005

  In Adaptation, Charlie Kaufman used sibling rivalry to illuminate The Orchid Thief's larger questions of being. The wrangling... More >>

• Talent of Wealth

  published September 13, 2005

  "Who's this opening act?" asked the guy next to me. "Ameriquest," I said. "I mean, Alanismorrissette." Under banners for the behemoth subprime... More >>

• 'Roll Bounce'

  published September 13, 2005

  Remember in Bring It On when the cheerleading squads face off for the final showdown? Y'know, when those furious edits from the stars'... More >>

• 'Separate Lies'

  published September 6, 2005

  The best tragedies of manners rely on the viewer believing that protagonists are driven by binding social constraints to keep up appearances... More >>

• Whispering Dixie: Quiet Revelations in a Reunion Drama

  published July 26, 2005

  Opening with stark shots of solitary Southern men catapulting their voices in shivery hill country hollers, Phil Morrison's Junebug... More >>

• 'Must Love Dogs'

  published July 19, 2005

  That's it. I'm divorcing Diane Lane—and every divorce-rebound flick that isn't Shirley Valentine. As in the insultingly bland Under... More >>

• Memphis Bleak

  published July 12, 2005

  It may be hard out there for a pimp. But things have gone pretty well for Hustle & Flow writer-director Craig Brewer. He certainly hustled,... More >>

• Celebrity Skinned

  published July 5, 2005

  Chain-smoking through his interviews, Michael Pitt—the antistar of Gus Van Sant's latest meditation—pushes russet-dyed bangs from his... More >>

• Women on the Verge: Troubled Lives Intersect in Jersey City

  published July 5, 2005

  In the Lower East Side coming-of-age tale Raising Victor Vargas, Judy Marte played a distracted, traumatized girl whose pained silences... More >>

• Well Versed: Potter's Poetic, Female-Centric Forbidden Tryst

  published June 14, 2005

  With the recent spike in Iraq carnage, it may seem genteel to propose working through Muslim-West cultural tensions in the form of forbidden... More >>

• Yes Woman

  published June 14, 2005

  To underscore the cultural tensions plaguing Yes's affluent London scientist and her Lebanese immigrant lover, director Sally Potter... More >>

• Blow Up

  published June 7, 2005

  Vérité means different things to different directors. Celebrity portrait-maker and video director David LaChapelle's stylized,... More >>

• Smothering Heights: Close Can't Save Clumsy Melodrama

  published June 7, 2005

  There's always the danger of forgetting that the rich and gorgeous have problems from which their furniture can't entirely save them. Merchant... More >>

• Eyes Wide Shut

  published May 24, 2005

  "I deal a lot with the way people look at other people," says Keren Yedaya. The Israeli director's full-length debut, Or (My Treasure) won... More >>

• Kiddie-Contest Doc Dances Around Class, Gender Issues

  published May 3, 2005

  Like Spellbound's glimpse of the darker side of childhood competition, Mad Hot Ballroom—a look at New York City schools'... More >>

• Right to Strife

  published April 5, 2005

  Had the Voice photo shoot with director Todd Solondz been just a few days later, maybe we'd have posed him with a wide piece of red duct... More >>

• The Sound and the Grand Jury

  published April 5, 2005

  The mega-club dance music scene is tough to mockumentarize. The excesses of Ibiza bacchanals have been highly self-parodic right from the... More >>