Malcolm Mcdowell Page 2

Disney's computer-animated mutt (voiced by John Travolta) defends his beloved owner, Penny (Miley Cyrus), from the evil forces of Dr. Calico (Malcolm McDowell) by head-butting semi-trucks, dangling from speeding locomotives, catapulting over military helicopters, and shooting laser beams from his eyes.

Continue reading: Bolt Review

When the Reaper virus devastates Glasgow, the British government quarantines all of Scotland. A few survivors make it out. The rest are locked behind heavy steel walls and guarded gates. Nearly three decades later, the plague reappears, this time in downtown London. Desperate to find a cure, Cabinet Minister Caranis (David O'Hara) gets Police Chief Nelson (Bob Hoskins) to send his top officer back into the hot zone. He chooses lady loose cannon Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra). Her goal? Lead a group of soldiers to Kane (Malcolm McDowell), a doctor who was once in charge of Reaper research. Seems the satellites have been picking up images of humans in the supposedly uninhabitable realm, and if Kane has found a cure, they may be able to stop the insidious disease.

Continue reading: Doomsday Review

Ever since Short Cuts won accolades, we get a yearly version of this movie, a sometimes thoughtful collection of stories, none large enough to stand alone as a feature film, some to slight to merit any attention at all. Between Strangers mitigates this problem by focusing on the stories of three women, all wrestling with past mistakes or old regrets.

Continue reading: Between Strangers Review

It's eight years later, and Poiré has directed another small comedy about two 12th century Frenchmen (hmm, played by Jean Reno and that same popular French guy) who are mistakenly transported to Chicago 2000. Hey, wait a minute!

Continue reading: Just Visiting Review

Gangster No. 1 feels like pieces a bunch of other, better movies slapped together -- GoodFellas' musical selections, the violence from American Psycho and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, a dash of any Quentin Tarantino or Guy Ritchie style of editing, Malcolm McDowell in a performance recalling A Clockwork Orange. Some of it's fun, but it just isn't original or creative.

Continue reading: Gangster No. 1 Review

Imagine "Crocodile Dundee" with a 12th Century knight in Chicago instead of a leathery lifelong Outbacker in New York, and you've pretty much got the crux of "Just Visiting," a slapsticky, Hollywood remake of 1993's slapsticky French mega-hit "Les Visiteurs."

Jean Reno and Christian Clavier reprise their roles from the original as Count Thibault of Malfete and his groveling servant-sidekick André, who are transported to modern times by a wizard's miscalculated spell.

How they have the dumb luck to materialize in a Chicago history museum where a Malfete descendent (Christina Applegate) is in charge of the 12th Century France exhibit isn't explained. In fact, the vast majority of the movie is dependent on the audience blindly accepting supremely stupid plot holes. But somehow director Jean-Marie Gaubert (also returning from the '93 version) manages to keep this fish-out-of-water stuff amusing, even though the film seems a little too pleased with its own self-aware cartoony-ness.

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The title sequence of Robert Altman's "The Company," a fictional verite peek behind the curtain of Chicago's Joffrey Ballet, consists of a conceptual dance with rainbow lighting and iridescent strips of fabric used to create a constantly shifting web behind and among the lissome and lively dancers.

Their accompanyment is music seemingly harvested from electronic scales -- bloops and bleeps like something out of "Logan's Run." The cinematography provides the audience's perspective, as well as some shots from the back of the stage looking outward, some from just offstage, silhouetting performers in lighting from vertical scaffolds, and some from high within the scaffolding itself.

There are several such sequences throughout the film (they represent passages of time -- one performance for each season at the Ballet), but this first dance literally sets the stage. Altman is metaphorically announcing his intention to spy on every aspect of his subject from the locker rooms and practice barres to covetous company politics and interpersonal cattiness to calluses, injuries and affairs interfering with ambition.

Continue reading: The Company Review