10 Items or Less; Candy

12/02/06 • 4 min

Brad Silberling’s “10 Items Or Less” stars Morgan Freeman as an unemployed movie star who may or may not commit to appearing in a low-budget movie. His co-star is Paz Vega. She plays a feisty young supermarket checker he befriends while he’s researching his role. (She works on the 10-items-or-less lane.) Silberling’s film was also made on an extremely modest scale, and at one point its two characters exchange their personal 10-best-and-worst lists. In the spirit of the story, then, I’ll list what I like best about the film...

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Apocalypto

Mel Gibson's Apocalypto is a Yucatec-language action adventure set in the waning days of the Maya civilization. After the first few impalements, amputations, rapes, eviscerations and beheadings, I thought Apocalypto might be the most obsessively, graphically violent film I'd ever seen. By the end I felt sure it was the most obsessively, graphically violent film I'd ever seen, but equally sure that Apocalypto is a visionary work with its own wild integrity. And absolutely, positively convinced that seeing it once is enough for one lifetime...