How can a story laden with this much betrayal and corruption feel this cheerful? Welcome to Hawaii. Bradley Cooper smiles his way through the shenanigans as the wounded hero (physically, morally, spiritually, professionally) who has to choose which parts are worth healing and which can be cut away. Happily, he …
A heaping helping of period pleasure from director David O. Russell. Irving Rosenfeld (a gutty Christian Bale, resplendent in combover and ascot) is a '70s Jay Gatsby without the class anxiety, a man comfortable with the notion that everybody is, like him, working the con — getting along by lying …
Director Clint Eastwood continues his quiet critique of the moviegoer's deep delight in cinematic violence. In this case, that means great swaths of gripping, based-on-a-true-story wartime action centered around Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper in full strong-silent-Texan mode), a good ol' boy who becomes a great old sniper for the Navy …
The F-grade. Smug quartet of rogue commandos on a noisy, chaotic, impossible mission to — besides recover some Ben Franklin engraving plates from Baghdad — clear their records and start a film franchise. Based on the Eighties TV series. With Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Sharlto Copley, Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, Jessica …
John Wells follows his half-baked August: Osage County with another recipe for disaster. “You have to be a prick to make it in this business,” announces a character in most flattering terms around the same time Gordon Ramsay’s name appears in the opening credits as executive producer. That may explain …
Sledgehammer comedy about four buddies (Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bartha) who go to Vegas for a bachelor party and wake up the morning after with no memory of the night before, a tiger in the bathroom, a baby in the closet, and the mystery of a missing …
For those who exited The Hangover Part II feeling their time and money well spent, this is the hair of the dog that bit you. The rest of humanity might consider a rabies vaccination before entering. This time, franchise creator Todd Phillips does away with the customary Mike Tyson cameo, …
As an explanation of romantic incompatibility, the catchphrase title is stunningly unilluminating, no matter which of its six words is stressed. (On screen, the third one stands out in green from the white of the rest, but that seems an arbitrary reading.) Satisfied with the what and incurious about the …
Any film with a lead character called “Charlie Bronson," whose father, played by Beau Bridges, is named “Clint," and who drives a mint '67 Lincoln Continental with suicide doors had best be an affectionate tribute to '70s drive-in fare. “Bronson” (Dax Shepherd) is a whistle-blowing retired getaway driver enrolled in …
A preening, fairly addictive movie about addiction. Bradley Cooper is Eddie, a blocked New York writer who takes mystery pills from an untrustworthy man. They give him fabulous powers, and Manhattan becomes the cracked mirror of Eddie’s rise to power. Of course, his real drug is ego, and Cooper achieves …
Paris, Je T'Aime crosses the pond. A multi-director box on bonbons, undeveloped little vignettes of male-female relations in the Big Apple. The ghostly segment by Shekhar Kapur stands out from the rest for stylistic reasons, the pallid palette, the persnickety compositions, the oval mirror frame within the frame. Natalie Portman, …
What makes the 1946 adaptation of William Lindsay Gresham bleak tale of life far, far under the big top so unique was the curious combination of director Edmund Goulding (acclaimed for such “woman’s pictures” as Grand Hotel and Dark Victory), the backing of a Hollywood major (20th Century Fox), and …
A rare exception to the old line about the book being better than a movie, The Place Beyond the Pines is a small-scale epic that might have been better as a novel. In a novel, we might not have minded the sudden loss of major characters, the 15-years-later epilogue that …