Three regular guys decide to kill their three horrible bosses; hijinks ensue. There are hints of the kind of gleeful malice (on both sides of the employee-employer divide) that could make this kind of story into a wicked black comedy — Jennifer Aniston has the most fun of anyone as …
Documentarian Mark Wexler travels the world, talking to old-timers and scientists about the secrets of staying alive and well preserved. The old-timers mostly offer sweetness and bromides — exercise and enjoy life! The scientists offer a shotgun spray of possibilities: hormone replacement, organ replacement, cryogenics, reduced calories, etc. The journey …
Martin Scorsese goes to town (Paris) with CGI effects and 3-D and the fantasy story from Brian Selznick’s book about Parisian orphan Hugo Cabret. Asa Butterfield is Hugo, maintaining the clocks in a train depot in 1930. Lonely, brilliant, and cute, he wins the friendship of a girl (delightful Clöe …
Look back in wide-eyed wonder. An idealistic English teacher (Minnie Driver) returns to her provincial hometown following the death of her father. (Being a princess in the big city just wasn't happymaking.) There, she plans to put on a rock-infused production of Shakespeare's Tempest in a Wales high school circa …
Brutal aliens pursue a fugitive teen to Earth, a crisis that rouses his special powers. Directed by D.J. Caruso (Disturbia) from a popular young-adult novel, it has conceptual traces of Superman, the Twilight saga, and TV’s The Fugitive. It offers cute bodies, ugly creeps, a dog, high school clichés, dewy …
Facile but enjoyable. George Clooney directed and stars as a presidential candidate, a glib liberal dream — apart from his Clintonian attraction to a naïve intern (Evan Rachel Wood), who seems to be running on the Live Bait ticket. As a silky machine of ambition, he excites other tough guys: …
She does it all: big-deal investment planning, motherhood, husband-care, cooking, endless e-mailing, and tireless posing as chick-flick star Sarah Jessica Parker, whose charm smile could have cheered up Stalingrad in 1942. She is surrounded by prettier women, but lonely biz wiz Pierce Brosnan is drawn to go-go Parker, while her …
A recruitment film of sorts that asks where protest ends and vandalism begins? The elfin Earth Liberation Front (ELF), a group of eco-terrorists, resented the Agriculture Department’s chopping down hundred year old trees to transform into nursery furniture. ELF began by building a drawbridge to block sawmills from gaining access …
Sylvain Chomet adapts and animates a never-filmed Jacques Tati story depicting a Tatiesque magician who goes from France to Scotland, where stony Edinburgh is lovingly cartooned. The whimsical wit and magical moments are barely developed from soft ideas. A brief glimpse of Tati’s classic Mon Oncle reminds us what is …
Director Tarsem Singh (The Fall, The Cell) has been called a visionary, which presumably means he has an eye for interesting visuals. And that’s almost enough to carry you through this bit of buff, burnished bloodshed, a mashup of 300 (invading barbarian army against civilized Greeks), Troy (immortality through deeds …
A bully afflicts a boy, and a tougher kid full of congested fury comes to his aid. That’s the plot core, but Susanne Bier’s Danish movie is much richer than a PC tract about bullying. It shifts from Africa to Denmark and back, and the kids are as complex as …
The endless “religious” hell of the Middle East, seen in the life of a Lebanese Christian woman (Lubna Azabal) who escapes to a better existence in French Canada. Her stunned offspring uncover the story of their Mother Courage, but director Denis Villeneuve piles it on as a pyramid of rape, …
Effective spookiness from director James (Saw) Wan, proving he is quite capable without the torture devices. The movie is all old school: haunted-house premise, practical make-up effects, a palpable absence of digital flourishes. The plot is simple enough: a relatively happy family begins to experience the typical bumps in the …