Awkward and long-winded translation of the 1961 Disney animated feature (and anti-furrier fable) into live-action. The dogs are adorable, even eloquent, but hardly as obedient as their cartoon forebears; and Glenn Close's dognapping offenses seem mild next to her overacting. With Jeff Daniels and Joely Richardson; directed by Stephen Herek.
The reclusive author (Jeff Daniels) of the best-selling Me and God, cornering “ten percent of the God market,” slowly yet suddenly comes out of his shell at the twentieth anniversary of the book’s publication. Writer and director John Hindman, owing a good deal to As Good As It Gets (although …
Just what the world needs: more bugs! Better bugs, besides: a lethal prehistoric spider from Venezuela, imported in a coffin and mated with the common American house spider. Frank Marshall, who had often enough served in the Producer role for Director Steven Spielberg, reverses the arrangement here, but has prudently …
Director Sam Mendes travels the sunnier side of Revolutionary Road, travels it, together with a playful, lovey-dovey, loosey-goosey couple expecting their first child and looking for a spot to put down roots, to Phoenix, to Tucson, to Madison, to Montreal, to Miami, evoking little sense of place anywhere outside of …
A homeless mutt fills the void in the life of a motherless girl, and knits together the townsfolk of Naomi, Florida. The maker of The Center of the World and Slam Dance might not be the man whom you'd choose to entrust with the care of your children. Then again, …
The original novel by Michael Connelly seemed to have been written with a movie in mind: one of those overblown, overheated thrillers whose villain is a taunting, string-pulling, game-playing archfiend of boogeyman dimensions. Clint Eastwood (cited, for unspecified services, in the book's acknowledgments) has made a better movie of it …
If you can accept Demi Moore as a blonde, maybe you can accept her also as a barefooted Carolinian clairvoyant (and meddling matchmaker) transplanted in Greenwich Village. Or maybe not. Her accent is all over the map; and with her new hair, new face, new chest (makeup? plastic surgery? what …
In times past, a typical sports figure could expect to live out his remaining years as a casino greeter or car salesman. But sometimes, Uncle Sam has other plans: the O.S.S. assigned Boston Red Sox catcher Moe Berg (Paul Rudd) the task of assassinating Werner Heisenberg (Mark Strong), the man …
Inert entry in the YA dystopia franchise about a post-apocalyptic Chicago where people are divided by chief character trait — candor, erudition, courage, etc. (And where some people “diverge” by embodying all of them.) By this point, the city’s order has collapsed: the bad old boss is dead, but the …
A couple of low-watt bulbs on a chivalrous mission from Rhode Island to Aspen. Not just the developmentally arrested characters, but also the filmmakers ("Prodoosed by ... Durected by ..."), contrive to put even below-average viewers at their social and cultural ease. Pee-pee jokes. Poo-poo jokes. Snot jokes. Fart jokes. …
True-life adventure of Canadian artist-inventor Bill Lishman, who figures out how to guide an orphan flock of geese to a migratory paradise in North Carolina. For a children's film, it's made with uncommon care (by Carroll Ballard, of The Black Stallion), even if much of that care comes down to …
Three-and-three-quarter-hour Civil War epic from Ronald F. Maxwell, writer and director also of Gettysburg: eight hours all told. Although it was made ten years later, and although the action takes place earlier, many of the same actors have been retained in the same roles (e.g., Jeff Daniels, C. Thomas Howell, …
Unabashed hero worship of the "crusading" CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow, directed and co-written by George Clooney, who also plays Murrow's television producer, Fred Friendly. (In the lead role, David Strathairn has Murrow's somber countenance, speaks with his cadence, and goes through a full carton of his coffin nails.) Framed …
Basically a one-act, one-location play, with not enough material to justify its scant 74-minute running time. Jeff Daniels stars in and scripted this tale of Joseph Harris, an alcoholic (what else?) playwright who hasn’t produced bupkis in over 20 years. He agrees to mount his latest production (that has yet …
No disrespect is meant in describing this as a consummate "women's picture." But inasmuch as the major-studio women's picture is practically a thing of the past, it will have to be a high-toned, high-flown one with illustrious literary connections. Two such connections, to be exact, the first to the Pulitzer …