Guillermo Del Toro(Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Tom Hiddleston, and Charlie Hunnam.
A 2007 Israeli film inspired this fretful thriller about Israeli agents sent to Cold War East Berlin to abduct a notorious Nazi (acted with evil charisma by Jesper Christensen). Two acting teams play the flawed heroes (Sam Worthington, Marton Csokas, Jessica Chastain when young; Tom Wilkinson, Helen Mirren, Ciarán Hinds …
James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain star as an asshat and botched suicide, respectively, whose marriage fell apart with the death of their young son. Producer Harvey ‘Scissorhands’ Weinstein took first time writer-director Ned Benson’s dolorous trilogy — combined total running time of 311 minutes — and sliced them down to …
Remember when celebrity biopics were relegated to the realm of TV movies? Now they’ve become a box office staple. On any given week, it’s virtually impossible to set foot in a multiplex without having at least one celebrity impersonator from which to choose. Evangelical bamboozler Jim Bakker (Andrew Garfield) never …
Wraparound treatment of the characters from Snow White and the Huntsman (some of the story occurs before the original, some after) that isn’t exactly good, but is definitely better than might be expected. The story borrows from Frozen — semi-close sisters, one of whom has a chilly heart and abilities …
Remember when your high school teacher would wheel out a 16mm projector and proceed to put the class to sleep with hopelessly unengaging educational films? That at least offered students a vacation from science class, which is more than can be said for the fate of audiences attending Christopher Nolan’s …
Southern-fried Godfather: diminutive kid brother (Shia LaBeouf, who seems to be trying a little too hard) wants in on the family moonshine business, but his godlike (read: unkillable) elders (a more impressive Tom Hardy and Jason Clarke) will hear none of it. We even get a botched assassination attempt and …
Boy kills girl and self, thus forcing their young daughters, Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and Lilly (Isabelle Nélisse), to spend five years in a deserted cabin being raised by mom's ghost. The feral siblings are eventually captured and placed in the home of their father's twin brother (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and his …
Kids: stay in school, especially if you plan on becoming an astronaut. When a freak accident (wind-loosed antenna piercing bio-monitor) leads to his being stranded on the red planet, astro-botanist Matt Damon decides he ain't got time to muse on fate, the fragility of existence, or man's place in the …
Following a pair of sojourns to the adorable Marigold Hotel, John Madden (Shakespeare in Love) takes a giant step forward with this perfectly timed tale of how to draw and quarter a lobbyist. “She pees standing up,” is how one of her colleagues describes Elizabeth Sloane (Jessica Chastain), an influence …
Word-pusher Aaron Sorkin makes his debut as a director, and whaddya know, he directs a lot like he writes: fast and smooth, bordering on slick. But just bordering, because love demands at least a soupçon of sincerity, and he’s found someone to love in Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain). She’s a …
Michael Shannon, who often seems like Frankenstein looking sadly for his doctor, plays a scared and scary guy in the flat Midwest. His sinister dreams and fantasies clue him that a vast storm is coming, and he hurls his fragile family into panic by building a big shelter (he already …
In only his fifth film in 38 years, eye-of-God director Terrence Malick wraps the pains of a family in ’50s Texas (partly based on his youth) in a bloated burrito of suffocating pomposity. The “wow” nature visuals, cosmic perspective, and solemn, whispery spirituality destroy any chance for real, poetic profundity. …