Writer-director Mitch Davis's take on the multiple-linked-storylines-holiday-movie, with the link provided by six stalled elevators during a power outage in New York City. Starring, among others, Patrick Stewart and John Heder as guys on the opposite ends of the power spectrum who discover that getting stuck in an elevator really …
Paranoia thriller without a milliwatt of power to compel belief. Mel Gibson, reunited with his Lethal Weapon director, Richard Donner, is an addlepated Manhattan cabbie, loonier than Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle, who puts out a newsletter of exposés on the order of "The Oliver Stone-George Bush Connection." (Number of subscribers: …
A Shakespearean herald reading the play’s old prologue is comically yanked at the beginning. So much for the literary roots, and despite mostly British accents, the wit leans to “Adios, loser,” “Let’s kick some grass,” and a “pansy” joke as garden gnomes fill out plastic remnants of the Romeo and …
A pinched punk band — so poor they can barely afford a presence on social media — siphons their way from gig to gig before contracting an engagement at an all-day skinhead sock hop. The white supremacist paraphernalia lining the walls of the titular cubbyhole should have been an instant …
Anything-for-a-laugh homosexual romantic comedy, under the cloud of AIDS. Among the many-things-for-laughs: asides and soliloquies to the camera ("Why is the idea of a simple dinner now like an evening of Russian roulette?"); recurrent appearances by a Mother Teresa look-alike (on the spot after a gay-bashing incident, etc.); a fantasy …
Everything one could ask for from a contemporary sword and sorcery adventure and more, this live-action retelling of the Sword in the Stone legend has the feel of John Boorman’s Excalibur were it written for today’s YA market. New kid in school Alex Elliot (Louis Ashbourne Serkis) comes across a …
Midwestern Miss Dorothy (Lea Michele) must return to Oz with her little dog Toto to help her old friends The Tin Man (Kelsey Grammer), The Cowardly Lion (Jim Belushi), and The Scarecrow (Dan Aykroyd) defeat the evil Jester (Martin Short). (Hey, weren't those guys comedians once?) Along the way, they …
Director and co-writer James Mangold takes another stab at the adamantium-clawed superhero (after 2013’s Japanese noir The Wolverine), this time turning him into an ailing Western hero tasked with transporting a very special youngster to safety, and winds up making the best superhero movie in years. It helps that the …
One immediately senses something amiss when a violent, homophobic cop (Matthew Lillard) is called upon to chaperone his wife’s (Carla Gugino) dissertation interview with an eccentric, 70-year-old Juilliard dance instructor (Patrick Stewart). The cunning, double-dealing dialog held promise for a good thirty minutes into the show. Working from his play …
Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart star in an adaptation of Harold Pinter's status quo-threatening comedy.
Monotoned lip service to the joys of reading (more familiarity is shown with the screen treatments of Dr. Jekyll, Moby Dick, Treasure Island, than with the original books), in the form of a Neverending Story-type fantasy. Part live action, part animation, but not really much of either: less than an …
Tardy takeoff on the already anachronistic Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Mel Brooks, trying to shoot his way out of a slump, keeps firing up the jokes, clanging bricks off the front of the rim or, just as often, heaving airballs. Among them are a "chorus" of rappers, a nomadic …
The viewer who failed to follow faithfully the Next Generation television series is liable to feel lost and left out whenever Capt. Picard goes all steely-eyed over his previous encounter with "the Borg." ("Borg? Sounds Swedish," says a character equally in the dark.) The tonnage of science-fictional gobbledegook in the …
The first movie to feature the cast of the spinoff TV series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, plus a brief hello and brief farewell to William Shatner's Capt. Kirk at the beginning and the end. One major difference between the original Star Trek movie and this seventh one, however, is …