Just serviceable bunker thriller that asks the question, “Would you want to survive The Big One if it meant being stuck in a windowless concrete cottage with the kind of guy who spent his life preparing to survive The Big One?” (Heck, his own wife and daughter couldn’t stand the …
Well, once in a while, maybe. Steven Spielberg's remake and update of Guy Named Joe, a WWII fantasy about the ghost of a recently deceased flyer who (unbeknown to anyone alive) tutors a neophyte flyer and even plays matchmaker between that neophyte and his own former sweetheart, loses some of …
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 …
Oscar-bound dramatization of the far-fetched but true story of six Americans who managed to escape the Iran hostage crisis in 1979 and find shelter in Canada by pretending to be actors in a big budget Hollywood space opera. Ben Affleck directs and stars as the CIA “exfiltration” expert who comes …
A/k/a The Bambino. A/k/a The Sultan of Swat. A/k/a George Herman Ruth. A from-the-beginning biographical approach (the abandonment at Saint Mary's Industrial School for Boys, the breaking of the chapel window by batted ball, etc.), plus some child-in-a-candy-store psychological analysis. John Goodman starts out too old (and too fat) for …
The Coen brothers (director Joel, producer Ethan, writers both) cut right to the heart of the role of the artist in Hollywood. They are too much artists themselves, however, to abide any idealizing or universalizing of their proxy on screen: a Broadway Bolshevik (modelled roughly and rudely on Clifford Odets) …
Vanity film from Kevin Spacey, directing himself in the part of pop star Bobby Darin in a free-form, fantasy-riddled biopic, throwing in a gratuitious impression of Jerry Lewis in the bargain (not bad), and doing his own singing in a mellower, droopier, croonier style possibly more suited to a biography …
There are actually two Lebowskis, a big one and a little one, a multimillionaire philanthropist and a lazy, laid-back bowler, both christened Jeffrey; and when the latter — who prefers to be addressed as "the Dude" — is mistaken for the other by a pair of dim-bulb thugs, he is …
There are actually two Lebowskis, a big one and a little one, a multimillionaire philanthropist and a lazy, laid-back bowler, both christened Jeffrey; and when the latter — who prefers to be addressed as "the Dude" — is mistaken for the other by a pair of dim-bulb thugs, he is …
A for-want-of-anything-better-to-do movie. It at least serves as a reminder that John Landis made a good one once. Eighteen years earlier. His lack of inspiration here extends to the clodhopping parade of face shots, the paraphrasing and plagiarizing of the original, the employment of the Russian mafia as straw badmen, …
Brick-thick chunk of whimsy, from the children's books of Mary Norton, about a species of wee folk known as Borrowers, one family of whom infests the house of the Lenders in a rose-hued, time-warped fantasyland. The Lilliputians and Brobdingnagians coexist well enough in the same space until they are required …
Minor Martin Scorsese, but in view of recent performance, minor is an improvement. Major Scorsese (Kundun, Casino, The Age of Innocence) is pretentious Scorsese, puffed-up Scorsese, inflated Scorsese. This one, an anti-valentine to New York City in the pre-Giuliani years of the decade, is an unmistakable companion piece to his …
The addiction nightmare played as comedy, very frothy and formulaic and materialistic comedy: a dozen maxed-out credit cards of an aspiring fashion writer, and rapacious consumer, in Manhattan (“They said I was a valued customer. Now they send me hate mail!”). The effervescent Isla Fisher dives into the role as …
A mike-frightened would-be songwriter from South Amboy, N.J., moves to Manhattan to pursue her dream among the bumping-and-grinding female bartenders (like exotic dancers without the clothing removal) of the titular nightspot. Flashy, empty puffery. With Piper Perabo, Adam Garcia, Maria Bello, Melanie Lynskey, John Goodman, LeAnn Rimes; directed by David …
Animated adventure about a self-absorbed South American monarch (David Spade, irritating even when only a voice) who is enlighteningly transformed into a llama. Made in the latter-day Disney style -- brassy, sassy, myopically "modern" -- and on the latter-day accelerated production schedule: thus the simplified graphics and limited cast of …