Email Author Mark Holcomb

2001 Stories by Mark Holcomb

• The Gray Zones

  published December 4, 2001

  War movies, so readily adaptable as propaganda, have never enjoyed a particularly glowing reputation. Operation Enduring Freedom doesn't promise... More >>

• International Men of History

  published November 27, 2001

  As if post-September 11 revelations of the CIA's ineptitude were just advance PR, the flashy espionage thriller Spy Game casts a wistful... More >>

• Bygone Conclusions

  published November 6, 2001

  Old-fashioned in good ways and bad, playwright Seth Zvi Rosenfeld's uneven King of the Jungle harkens back to an era when movies weren't... More >>

• God Save the Queens

  published October 30, 2001

  Sassy, sappy, and warm as November in L.A., the super-mellow comedy Punks is propelled by writer-director Patrik-Ian Polk's impressive... More >>

• Personal Crisis

  published October 16, 2001

  If you've ever had the misfortune of traveling with people who think the world revolves around them, you'll be well prepared for Dianne Griffin... More >>

• Booster Shot

  published September 18, 2001

  For anyone who's ever suspected that something sinister lurks behind the rah-rah vehemence of high school football, Kenneth A. Carlson's Go... More >>

• Shrew To Tango

  published September 4, 2001

  Depending on your romantic inclinations, writer-director Mark Brown's scalding comedy Two Can Play That Game will strike you as either... More >>

• Badly Drawn Boys and Girls

  published August 14, 2001

  More the celluloid equivalent of fluffing than an actual movie, J.B. Rogers's absurdly pro forma American Pie 2 defies categorization. Is... More >>

• Try Fidelity

  published August 7, 2001

  A must-see for opera lovers and a snappy diversion for cinephiles, The Turandot Project is documentarian Allan Miller's latest peek into... More >>

• Big Skylarking

  published July 10, 2001

  In Thomas Bezucha's stupefyingly benign Big Eden, Henry (Arye Gross), a partnerless gay New York painter, leaves his doting gallery rep and... More >>

• Songcatchers

  published July 3, 2001

  Like Lambic, another Belgian import, Dominique Deruddere's weirdly compelling caper comedy Everybody's Famous! is both pleasantly sweet and... More >>

• Pomona Queen

  published June 26, 2001

  A lecherous gothic fairy tale with a bona fide cult following, Richard Blackburn's 1973 Lemora, Lady Dracula is the latest bit of pulp... More >>

• Be My Quest

  published June 12, 2001

  Not the animated cat's big-screen debut the title implies, Adventures of Felix is instead a wafer-thin, sweetly sentimental picaresque with... More >>

• Hungry Heart

  published May 22, 2001

  For a couple of movies now, the words "starring Jennifer Lopez" have heralded little more than low-aspiration, risk-immune star vehicles. Yet... More >>

• Trade-Offs

  published March 13, 2001

  Timed for a potential Traffic Oscars sweep or as ammunition for a Steven... More >>

• Go for Baroque

  published February 20, 2001

  If nothing else, Hannibal proves that nobody can prettify prosaic drivel like Ridley Scott, Hollywood's most reliable hired gun. Yet the... More >>

• Hoosier Daddy

  published February 6, 2001

  A brief and highly subjective account of Manhattan's bohemian heyday, New York in the '50s is grounded in the sort of nostalgia that can... More >>