With his compulsively slamming lyrics and king-of-the-world delivery, DMX intuitively echoes the existentialism of the projects of the novelist Donald Goines. – Elvis Mitchell
For those not so taken by the star power, this new ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ is the equivalent of a domineering team you can’t stand that enters the Super Bowl. Even if you don’t like the players, the odds are so good that it’s tough to bet against them. – Elvis Mitchell
Often, when Jim Carrey plays it straight, all of the vitality is drained from his face; he looks like a root-canal patient trying out a pleasant expression for his oral surgeon. – Elvis Mitchell
When Bruce Lee gets his cameo in ‘The Green Hornet’ – as one of the drawings in Kato’s notebook – it clarifies what the film is: an unrealized sketch. A sketch can afford to allude to a point of view. Moviemakers need to show their point of view, something this shrug of a movie never gets around to doing. – Elvis Mitchell
There are storytelling traditions that come from Africa that are unique from anywhere else. – Elvis Mitchell
The Wachowskis’ use of space rivals that of musical directors like Gene Kelly and Mark Sandrich. – Elvis Mitchell
‘Black Hawk Down’ has such distinctive visual aplomb that its jingoism starts to feel like part of its atmosphere. – Elvis Mitchell
‘Infernal Affairs’ uses a vibrating terseness usually found in the writer and director Michael Mann’s work. Thematically, this film deploys the techniques Mr. Mann brought to bear on ‘Heat,’ right down to using a similar cold-blooded electronic score. – Elvis Mitchell
‘Black Hawk Down’ wants to be about something, and in the midst of the meticulously staged gunfire, the picture seems to choose futility arbitrarily. – Elvis Mitchell
Since most of ‘Mean Girls’ consists of the outsider Cady observing the tribal rites of her new setting and laying it all out in narration, this movie is just like home for the meticulous and ruthless deadpan that Ms. Fey has perfected for the satirical ‘S.N.L.’ newscast in which she and Jimmy Fallon are the anchors. – Elvis Mitchell
We do want to be diverted and be interested and be provoked by popular culture – by art, if we’re lucky. And it’s amazing how often people have lost sight of this. – Elvis Mitchell
We want to see ourselves – but differently. We want to see these dream versions of ourselves. We want to be surprised; we want to be entertained. I think primarily, especially in this country, we ask that movies entertain us, which seems to be something they’re less and less likely to do on a continual basis. – Elvis Mitchell
Just the idea of seeing a type of narrative we’ve not seen before is a chance to be surprised. – Elvis Mitchell
The influence of John Hughes is fully felt in the melodrama ‘Donnie Darko.’ This first film written and directed by Richard Kelly is a wobbly cannonball of a movie that tries to go Mr. Hughes one better; it’s like a Hughes version of a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. – Elvis Mitchell
Justin Lin, the writer and director of the teenage-wasteland drama ‘Better Luck Tomorrow,’ a shrewdly tense piece of storytelling, recognizes that sometimes it’s good for a filmmaker to stir up trouble. – Elvis Mitchell
Whom do you feel sorrier for: the cast of ‘Boat Trip’ or their children? Remember, kids can be very cruel – and this latest ‘get Cuba Gooding Jr. career counseling fast’ project is a misfire from beginning to end. – Elvis Mitchell
The mission of ‘8 Mile’ is essentially to garner sympathy for a white rapper involved in an old-school shootout – a rap contest. This may be the final frontier for pop, more unbelievable than the prospect of launching a member of ‘N Sync into orbit. – Elvis Mitchell
What we’re most aware of in ‘Eight-Legged Freaks’ is how similar it is to other movies, a recombinant mutated species itself, the product of the crossbreeding of the suffering-from-gigantism movies of the 1950s and the 1990 B-picture classic ‘Tremors.’ – Elvis Mitchell