Email Author Michael Atkinson

2001 Stories by Michael Atkinson

• Secrete Agents

  published August 7, 2001

  Like a B-12 shot in the ass after hot months of malt liquor and White Castle, Osmosis Jones resuscitates the filmgoing summer with a vital... More >>

• Devolution of the Species

  published July 31, 2001

  The distinctive siren song of the original Planet of the Apes films has a powerful subterranean charge. Whatever its surface attractions... More >>

• Sweet Portugal’s Badass Songs

  published July 31, 2001

  When it comes to Portuguese cinema—another national legacy Americans know next to nothing about—the argument usually begins and ends... More >>

• Creature Comforts

  published July 24, 2001

  Slumming actors in safari vests stalk through the tropical overgrowth; a digitally manifested dinosaur bulldozes out of the brush; screaming... More >>

• Abuse Your Illusion

  published July 17, 2001

  An exploding plastic inevitable, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within dares you to be amazed by its soulless mimeograph of humanity. In a... More >>

• The Wages of Original Sin

  published July 10, 2001

  The new African film Adanggaman is as fundamental, and as haunted, as a combat scar. Landing visually somewhere between Ousmane... More >>

• Home Bodies

  published July 3, 2001

  The summer-event spilth being upon us, it's time to vaunt the last few months' richer video releases and thus recall how home entertainment... More >>

• Robot Speaks: Warning Warning

  published June 19, 2001

  As deliberately dazed and confused as Run Lola Run was mechanical crash-and-burn, Tom Tykwer's The Princess and the Warrior may... More >>

• Culture Vultures Home to Roost

  published June 12, 2001

  Earnest, anemic, and ham-handed, Maggie Greenwald's new period drama, Songcatcher, occupies interesting territory: Appalachia circa 1907,... More >>

• Ring Cycles

  published June 5, 2001

  Bruce Beresford's new movie about the life of Alma Schindler-Mahler, Bride of the Wind, is a standard-issue fin de siècle costume... More >>

• Hobbit Forming

  published June 5, 2001

  Peter Jackson's movie trilogy The Lord of the Rings raises the bar on pop-cult hype's global ubiquity and behemothic scale—New Line... More >>

• Ready to Eat

  published May 29, 2001

  The Italy you confront in the new Walter Reade series is restlessly global in two opposing senses of the word: On one hand, immigrant-infused... More >>

• Fast Company

  published May 22, 2001

  In one resounding ker-splat, Hong Kong shitstorm Tsui Hark has finally made a crater above Canal Street, thanks to a blistering new film (Time... More >>

• Manic Regression

  published May 15, 2001

  With DreamWorks' new all-digital confection, Shrek, computer animation has finally achieved a dismaying marzipan-ness. Three dimensions are... More >>

• Bigger, Longer & Uncut

  published May 15, 2001

  Somewhere it is etched in the spongy blacktop of popular-art history that the ideal, or at least appropriate, length for feature films is between... More >>

• Ice Queen on a Hot Streak

  published May 8, 2001

  "I had to take time off, OK?" Charlotte Rampling coolly hisses to our very first question (Where've you been?), confirming her own off-putting,... More >>

• Flails From the Crypt

  published May 8, 2001

  Proving again that a Dogmatic vow of chastity can lead to a certain purity of hogwash, Kristian Levring's The King Is Alive is endearingly... More >>

• All Excess

  published May 1, 2001

  Somewhere between a Sixth Generation soap-opera splurge and a gender-flipped mimeograph of The King and I, Yim Ho's Pavilion of... More >>

• Forgotten Silver

  published April 24, 2001

  Kino! Kino! Kino! as Guy Maddin would say—cinephiles are easy to suss out amid the metaglamour and thrill-seeking that amount to American... More >>

• A Second Life

  published April 17, 2001

  Just another symptom of our all-American film culture quarantine: Master Dutch documentarian/free-form personal filmmaker Johan van der Keuken... More >>

• Expired Ham

  published April 10, 2001

  Hardly remembered, Jean-Marie Gaubert’s Les Visiteurs sucked up $100 million of European and Asian tickets in 1993 but earned about 14... More >>

• Sembène’s Universal Language

  published April 3, 2001

  "Tout est politique!" Thus Ousmane Sembène strips down the love-hate argument he has had for 35 years with movies, with the grim... More >>

• The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime

  published March 27, 2001

  With the sugar-smacked, thoroughly groovy Spy Kids, Robert Rodriguez proves he understands things about children's entertainment that have... More >>

• Children of the Revolution

  published March 20, 2001

  Commonly referred to as one of the world's most conspicuous film cultures, Iranian cinema actually has a good shot at being the most significant... More >>

• Over the Moon Down Under

  published March 13, 2001

  A silk-stitched Aussie softball that suggests an insecure nation plagued with longing for global consequence, The Dish plays like a... More >>