A trembling, French, often smart view of first fixation. Lola Créton is charmingly vivid and vulnerable as the Parisian teen whose obsession with a smitten, more sensible guy (Sebastian Urzedowsky) makes him restless. She gets partly rehabbed by her teacher of architecture but pines for the former life plan. Romantic …
There’s something unkosher about Seann William Scott playing a character named “Doug Glatt.” He makes the best of the gladsome dolt who is recruited by a semi-pro hockey team after being spotted brawling in the stands. Slo-mo bloodletting backed by classical music frequently pulls this in the direction of “Jake …
Charles Dickens' cracking yarn about an orphan who becomes a gentleman through the workings of an anonymous benefactor gets a new treatment from Mike Newell, whose remarkably varied filmography includes a Harry Potter film (The Goblet of Fire), a video-game adaptation (Prince of Persia), and a couple of famous Brit …
The impact of global warming is the subject of yet another series of talking-head testimonials and finger-wagging rebukes aimed at those deep in “climate denial.” As if Al Gore’s conveniently filmed Learning Annex lecture wasn’t enough, documentarian Craig Scott Rosebraugh dredges up one more bucket of cold water to throw …
Canonized singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley (Penn Badgely) agrees to perform at a tribute to a man he despises: his equally cultish folk singer father, Tim. (Dad OD’d when he was 28, and his son’s drowning at age 30 was ruled an accident.) We follow Jeff as he spends the week before …
Increasingly bushy-haired oil-rig men, their plane downed in an Alaskan storm, face extremely hairy wolves. No contest. As desperate men are picked off, Liam Neeson becomes even more the bravely stoical loner than he was in Schindler’s List. Joe Carnahan directed with strong weather effects, okay acting, and deaths not …
Babs dearest. Barbra Streisand could write her own first-class ticket on any project in Tinseltown but instead chooses to ride shotgun for Seth Rogen in this terminally cute justification for matricide. Rogen — an uptight organic chemist shopping around a new environmentally safe cleaning product — decides to play Cupid …
A surprise departure from Margarethe von Trotta, Germany’s answer to Ingmar Bergman. This softball biopic, filmed in the manner of a stiff '60s melodrama, chronicles a crucial point in the life of the famed German-Jewish philosopher. It also pays homage to her mentor, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and his cinematic skipper, …
Lovely but slight, Haute Cuisine tells the (based on a true) story of a country chef — played with ease, energy, and middle-aged grace by Catherine Frot — who became personal chef to the president of France, all because she knew how to cook with the simple elegance of his …
At last, an answer to the burning question, “Why the big magila over Hava Nagila?” The infectious wedding and bar mitzvah dance standard is given the talking head (kibitzing kop?) treatment in this enjoyable, if not rigorously fluffy documentary. From the shtetls of Ukraine to Canter’s Deli in L.A., director …
Manic Pixie Mexican Dreamgirl! Or, how do you solve a problem like Lupita?
Steven Soderbergh’s latest attempt to subvert popular genre expectations results in an adequate 007 action/adventure picture. Mixed martial arts champion Gina Carano has the tough, tight look and smoldering dispassion the genre demands, but not even Meryl Streep could add depth to this. It’s easier to swallow than the average …
A Norwegian thriller “inspired” by American thrillers, now set for a Hollywood remake. Aksel Hennie plays a top corporate recruiter in Oslo who, to maintain the lifestyle of his tall Viking wife, steals an illicit Rubens painting. He spirals into a terrible mess, including a fully loaded outhouse. Credible actors …
Filipino horror film about evil doppelgängers. Vilma Santos, Kim Chiu and Pokwang.