A small-town Carolina Casanova (Paul Schneider, an unstunning facial composite of Cruise and Costner) takes a shine to one of his buddies' all-grown-up but virginal sister (Zooey Deschanel, with her druggy, draggy, warped-record delivery, turning every line into an exercise in eccentricity, an adventure in affectation): "She makes me decent." …
A serious, even solemn, effort to do with the universal loss of innocence in a group of rural Southern playmates. (The precocious girl narrator sets, or matches, the tone: "When I look at my friends, I know there's goodness.") Crisply photographed; stiffly acted. Written and directed by David Gordon Green.
Forty years and numerous sequels and/or reboots have passed, and there’s not a moment in any of them to rival the slow thrust of steadicam butterflies at play in John Carpenter’s original. The well-ordered stalking and resultant butchery of a pair of morbidly obsessed fanboy and fangirl public radio podcasters …
The scariest part of the film was the Miramax logo and the bad memories it stirred. What really kills? A director of David Gordon Green’s (George Washington, Snow Angels, Manglehorn) stature hitching his star to a formulaic “thing that refuses to die” comic book celebration of splatter. (That’s Green’s voice …
Forty years and numerous sequels and/or reboots have passed, and there’s not a moment in any of them to rival the slow thrust of steadicam butterflies at play in John Carpenter’s original. The well-ordered stalking and resultant butchery of a pair of morbidly obsessed fanboy and fangirl public radio podcasters …
A bolo punch of a reminder that, when not under the evil influence of Jerry Bruckheimer or making films for the financial pleasure of the I.R.S., Nicolas Cage holds sway with the best of them. As Joe, Cage commandeers a backwoods crew of “Timber!” yelling professional nature-killers who poison and …
A pair of ex brothers-in-law from the Bluegrass State (hushful Paul Eenhoorn and blustery Foghorn Leghorn proxy, Earl Lynn Nelson) are set adrift on a garrulous, firstclass Shirley Valentine cruise to Iceland. Sony Pictures Classics harpooned this understated, sprinkled-with-sugar two-character travel yarn after its debut at Sundance. David Gordon Green …
How is it possible for Al Pacino to turn in one of the best and worst performances of the year essentially playing the same character? The truth is in the storytelling. For 97 minutes director and generous renegade David Gordon Green delights in following Manglehorn (Al Pacino), a small-town locksmith …
The film that dares to ask: will you buy Sandra Bullock as a borderline, ball-busting political strategist? To bring down your asking price, the film takes her south of the border, where everything is portrayed as cheaper: the cynicism, the political strategizing, the despair, and even the redemption. At least …
A buddy comedy, a stoner comedy, a crime comedy from the House of Apatow, about a user and his dealer — best friends — on the run from the mob. As the two dopers, James Franco mimics the classic symptoms with dedication, while Seth Rogen is content to be Seth …
What’s slower than watching two guys paint broken lines down the center of a highway? This dramedy about a pair of equally dashed road workers (lead maintenance man Paul Rudd and his slumberish brother-in-law, Emile Hirsch) who combat boredom and isolation with petty bickering. Director David Gordon Green (*Snow Angels*, …
Jonah Hill pays a slob assigned the task of overseeing a trio of ill-behaved neighborhood kids. When pseudo-girlfriend Ari Graynor calls, offering intercourse in exchange for coke, Hill takes the children on a wild ride through the urban ghetto. If it wasn’t for plot coincidence, there would be no plot …
The interweave of ordinary lives in a wintry Northeastern small town has a number of attractions in it, starting with the clear bright wide-screen image, letting in a lot of décor and townscape, albeit much of it self-satirically quaint and cornball. Kate Beckinsale shows off, not for the first time, …
Had anyone other than David Gordon Green been attached as director, this story of a Boston Marathon bombing victim would most likely have gone unreviewed in these pages. Jake Gyllenhaal stars, in what may be his most physically and emotionally challenging role to date, as Jeff Bauman, an unremarkable man …
David Gordon Green retains the Southern rural naturalism of his George Washington and his All the Real Girls, but adds a jolt of melodrama: a sort of down-to-earth Night of the Hunter, crashingly prosaic and squalid ("Ya wanna smell my armpit?"), about the Bad Brother who covets his late father's …