Scriptwriter Philippa Goslett and director Paul Morrison ask us to take an interest in three pretentious students in post-WWI Spain on the grounds that their names are Federico García Lorca, Luis Buñuel, and Salvador Dalí. Inasmuch as all three are dark young men of similar age, it would be difficult …
Fourteen-year-old rape and murder victim, marooned in “the in-between," a/k/a "the blue horizon" dividing life and afterlife, continues to watch over her family, friends, and unapprehended killer, a quintessential creep who looks to be guiltily, self-incriminatingly, in disguise: Stanley Tucci with a blond comb-over hairpiece, paste-on matching mustache, aviator glasses, …
A telegraphed musical romance clean enough and sweatless enough for the Lifetime Channel. Maybe also the Hallmark Channel. A slim, pretty, blond schoolteacher, saddled with a preoccupied, stocky, bald fiancé, finds a new love and a true lover when a hearing-impaired swing dancer visits the school for a motivational speech. …
Action film about a creative man who must find his brave side in order to battle a sinister group of party men who seem to be part of an already-written story that must be lived out. Written and directed by Madonne Ashwin, starring Sivakarthikeyan and Aditi Shankar.
Inside the small world of a long-time live-in domestic in middle-class Chile, unable any longer to keep up with her chores but unable to abide an assistant (i.e., a rival). A portrait of dark psychology in a milky image, matter-of-factly presented by director Sebastián Silva, stolidly, solidly acted by Catalina …
Simon Fellows’s retelling of the Lewis Carroll children’s classic, updated (albeit little more distorted than Tim Burton’s) in a depopulated urban underground in North East England, with a funhouse atmosphere of tilted cameras and electric Expressionistic color. It is often good to look at, not least for the comely Maggie …
Roundabout romantic comedy starting with a travelling saleslady at a mom-and-pop-and-son motel in arid Arizona, where she catches the eye and the fancy of the socially inept son. The operational details of the Kingman Motor Inn are ingratiating, but the relationship details are grating. Steve Zahn’s “growth” from a stunted …
Filmmaker Richard Linklater fictionalizes, mythologizes, the Mercury Theatre’s mounting of a modern-dress Julius Caesar in 1937, the titular “me” being a stagestruck high-schooler who in one week lands a small speaking and singing part in the Broadway production, falls head over heels for the company secretary, sees her stolen out …
The first film directed by character actor Grant Heslov has a promising premise (paranormal military research), plenty of script troubles (an investigative reporter's blathering narration, the disruptive channel-switching between periods twenty years apart, a sputtery and rudderless last act), and a couple of tickling performances by Jeff Bridges as the …
Long chronology of very violent criminal activity, reaching back (for possible extenuating circumstances) to Algeria in 1959, a half appalling, half gloating, four-fifths unconvincing biography of France’s Most Wanted. Directed by Jean-François Richet (of the Assault on Precinct 13 remake), it starts badly, with an unchronological credits sequence of pointlessly …
Jean-François Richet finishes out, in a shade under two and a quarter hours, his rubbishy mythologizing of the French gangster Jacques Mesrine, with plenty of frenetic and messy and mostly incredible action, and with Vincent Cassel, going through a Mr. Potato Head assortment of disguises, flirting constantly with caricature. The …
Three months from the finish of his tour of duty, a wounded Iraq War vet gets assigned on the home front to the Casualty Notification Team, a recipe for overacting. A muted Samantha Morton almost alone avoids the pitfall. With Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson, Jena Malone, and Steve Buscemi; directed …
Sort of a Gallic Capra caper, wherein a ragtag fraternity of the homeless wage industrial espionage against two giant weapons manufacturers. Some clever and energetic direction by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, though the unrelenting whimsy and the Little Man sentiment, to say nothing of the honeyed photography, tend to cloy. Danny Boon, …