Stephanie Zacharek: Movie

“We've moved away from being a culture of people who think about movies to one made up of people who believe that spouting a list of preferences is the same as registering an opinion.”

Stephanie Zacharek

Unintelligent Agent, Salon.com, 1997-01-17, 2006-08-25, http://web.archive.org/web/20000930123506/http://www.salon.com/media/media970117.html, 2000-09-30 http://www.salon.com/media/media970117.html,

People , Thinking

“The most interesting character here is an animal, a sturdy-looking white and black bulldog, who appears throughout the movie, angel style, to speak the truth -- silently. In this load of mind-bendy bushwa, he's the only thing worth watching, or listening to.”

Stephanie Zacharek

Review http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2007/02/23/number_23/index.html of The Number 23 (2007)

Truth , Angels , Appearance , Animals

“Extravagant in movie terms but stingy in emotional ones, it embodies all of [director Steven] Spielberg's bad impulses and almost none of his good ones: It's a grand display of how well he knows how to work us over, and yet the desperation with which he tries to get to us is repulsive.”

Stephanie Zacharek

Review http://dir.salon.com/story/ent/movies/review/2005/06/29/war/index.html of War of the Worlds (2005)

“I can't remember ever feeling so glad that a movie was finally over. [Director George] Lucas may have held my imagination hostage for two hours, but reclaiming it afterward wasn't hard at all.”

Stephanie Zacharek

Review http://salon.com/ent/movies/review/2002/05/16/attack_clones/index.html of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002)

Feeling , Imagination

“It's mournful and troubling in a way that goes beyond ordinary movie manipulation. It burns clean.”

Stephanie Zacharek

Review http://salon.com/ent/movies/review/2000/12/22/cast_away/index.html of Cast Away (2000)

Way

“Despite the bare butts and crude sex jokes -- or because of them -- this Adam Sandler vehicle addresses some of the biggest political problems of our time. … At the very least, it's got to be the first picture to use smelly-feet jokes as a means of parsing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But more than that, it's a mainstream movie that dares to make jokes about the kinds of complex political realities that most of us don't dare bring up at dinner parties.”

Stephanie Zacharek

Review http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2008/06/06/zohan/ of You Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008)

Sex , Problem , Reality , Time

“You can talk film theory till you're blue in the face, but in the end, the thing that may haunt you most about a movie is a pair of eyes.”

Stephanie Zacharek

Seduced and Abandoned, Salon.com, 1997-05-09, 2006-08-25, http://web.archive.org/web/19990828005105/http://www.salon.com/may97/vep970509.html, 1999-08-28 http://www.salon.com/may97/vep970509.html,

“Who would have thought that [director] Cameron Crowe had a movie as bad as Vanilla Sky in him? It's a punishing picture, a betrayal of everything that Crowe has proved he knows how to do right.”

Stephanie Zacharek

Review http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2001/12/14/vanilla/index.html of Vanilla Sky (2001)

Betrayal

“It's a movie barely fit for a cretin, much less a King. … If you hear a door slam in the theater, you'll know that Elvis has left the building -- in disgust.”

Stephanie Zacharek

Review http://archive.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2001/02/23/graceland/index.html of 3000 Miles to Graceland (2001)