New movie reviews, DVD reviews, interviews, and all things film.

• Home
• Reviews A-C
• Reviews D-F
• Reviews G-J
• Reviews K-M
• Reviews N-Q
• Reviews R-T
• Reviews U-Z

• Body of Lies **1/2
• City of Ember **1/2
• Happy-Go-Lucky ****
• More

• The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration
• The Happening
• Psycho: Special Edition
• Rear Window: Special Edition
• Touch of Evil: 50th Anniversary Edition
• Vertigo: Special Edition
• You Don't Mess with the Zohan
• More

• My latest posts at cinematical.com
• A Tribute to Paul Newman
• Steve Coogan on Hamlet 2
• Manny Farber (1917-2008)
• Bernie Mac (1957-2008)
• Emily Mortimer
• Brad Anderson
• Scarlett Johansson: Anywhere I Lay My Head [CD Review]
• Don Cheadle at CineVegas
• Abel Ferrara at CineVegas
• Tina Sinatra
• My Top 100 Films [Updated]
• My Top 60 Directors [Updated]
• Charlton Heston (1924-2008)
• Scott B. Smith
• Estelle Parsons
• Roger Donaldson
• Roy Scheider (1932-2008) • Mike Binder
• James McAvoy
• Tony Gilroy
• David Cronenberg & Viggo Mortensen
• William Friedkin
• Peter Fonda & James Mangold
• Kasi Lemmons on Talk to Me
• Steve Buscemi on Interview
• Lynn Hershman-Leeson
• Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg & Nick Frost on Hot Fuzz
• Scott Frank, Joseph Gordon-Levitt & Matthew Goode
• The Top 50 Movies of the Past Ten Years (1997-2006)
• Bong Joon-ho, director of The Host
• Mark Polish, Michael Polish & Billy Bob Thornton
• The 'Mexican New Wave'
• Interview with Singaporian Filmmaker Djinn
• Joe Carnahan & Jeremy Piven Interview
• Terry Zwigoff on the new Bad Santa Director's Cut
• Alfonso Cuarón Interview
• Guillermo Del Toro Interview
• Chris Noonan Interview
• Robert Altman (1925-2006)
• Scarlett Johansson: A Study in Scarlett
• Christmas Movies
• Combustible Celluloid's Big Guide to Halloween & Horror Movies
• Joe Eszterhas
• Jet Li
• Zach Braff
• Kirby Dick
• James Ellroy
• Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson
• Adrien Brody
• Steve Irwin (1962-2006)
• Elisha Cuthbert/Jamie Babbit
• Matt Dillon
• David R. Ellis
• Maria Bello
• Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson
• Mickey Spillane (1918-2006)
• Al Gore
• Cult Movies
• Actress Interview Gallery
• The Top 100
• More Features and Interviews

• Not Quite a Memoir: Of Films, Books, the World, by Judy Stone
• James Agee: The Library of America Collection, by James Agee
• Just Making Movies, by Ronald L. Davis
• Guide to Essential Movies, by Joe Leydon
• Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood, by Robert S. Birchard
• Profoundly Disturbing, by Joe Bob Briggs
• A Third Face, by Samuel Fuller
• Dark Lover, by Emily Leider
• Agee on Film, by James Agee
• Lulu in Hollywood, by Louise Brooks
• Negative Space, by Manny Farber
• 5001 Nights at the Movies, by Pauline Kael
• More Books

The online film magazine Combustible Celluloid offers new movie reviews, DVD reviews, film reviews, actor interviews, actress interviews, director interviews, film books and all things cinema related for the thoughtful and passionate. Online for ten years! Over 3000 reviews!

SEARCH MOVIES / CELEB

Next (2007)

Rating: 2 Stars (out of 4)

Two-Minute Stake

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy Next on DVD

Nicolas Cage plays Cris Johnson, a Las Vegas stage magician that can actually see two minutes into his own future. Ordinarily, this allows him to win card games and duck bullets, but in Lee Tamahori's new movie, he moves onto bigger things. He must track down a girl who has been appearing to him in visions and he must stop French (!) terrorists from blowing up Los Angeles with a nuclear explosive. Based on a short story ("The Golden Man") by Philip K. Dick, the basic outline of the film is constantly intriguing, even if Tamahori and three screenwriters don't concretely establish the rules behind Cris' abilities. Sometimes he goes outside his two minutes, sometimes he sees visions within visions, and sometimes the visions are played for laughs. Besides that, Tamahori turns in a very sloppy production with shaky action sequences, junky visual effects, an ugly hairpiece for Cage and badly over-pitched performances. Julianne Moore co-stars as a snappish FBI agent who barks through her pages of expositional dialogue, and Jessica Biel is the girl in Cris' visions. Peter Falk appears all-too briefly as one of Cris' cohorts. Sadly, more people will probably see this than saw last year's excellent A Scanner Darkly, also based on a Dick story.

AskMen.com: Next

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Julianne Moore, Jessica Biel, Thomas Kretschmann, Tory Kittles, José Zúñiga, Jim Beaver, Jason Butler Harner, Michael Trucco, Enzo Cilenti, Laetitia Danielle, Nicolas Pajon, Sergej Trifunovic, Charles Chun, Patricia Prata, Jon Hughes, Jack Ong, Alice Kim Cage, Peter Falk
Written by: Gary Goldman, Jonathan Hensleigh, Paul Bernbaum, based on a story by Philip K. Dick
Directed by: Lee Tamahori
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violent action, and some language
Running Time: 96 minutes
Date: April 27, 2007