Apocalypse happens within 48 hours of the titular sayonara being anonymously texted to over a million phones. Premises, premises. What begins with a lecture on revolution as a moral obligation quickly centers on a group of vested whiners stranded in a cabin while awaiting the rapture. Think the thirty-somethings from …
Other than Bruce Willis reprising the role of John McClane, nothing in the film bears even the remotest connection to any of its four predecessors. McClane pulls up stakes and catches the first red eye to Russia to help his son (Jai Courtney) have fun "killing f@#&ers.;" Never much to …
A tribute to that dying breed, the public, progressive intellectual. Hagiography isn't always this entertaining; but then, Vidal was an entertainer. Novelist, yes; essayist, certainly; TV personality, hell yes; even erstwhile politician and screenwriter (Suddenly, Last Summer). But always an entertainer, if only to mask the pain of an awful …
Why, Wong Kar, why is every major Asian action director compelled to bring forth a stodgy historical epic? As if Wilson Yip’s two exceptional biopics on martial arts legend Ip Man weren’t enough, Wong Kar-Wai, a legend in his own right, offers this disordered, sorely cheerless elucidation. It’s a kung-fu …
An Irish fable about how much joy and satisfaction an Irishman takes in a hard day's work. How much? So much that a man (Brendan Gleeson, looking beardy) will spin lies in every direction just to punch a clock: to the oil company he needs to choose his town for …
An illustrated existential crisis. Or, a survival story in which nearly every exterior event carries interior significance. Either way, it's gripping. The story is simple: an astronaut (a smooth-faced Sandra Bullock), cut loose from her spiritual moorings by a freak accident, is cut loose from her physical moorings by another …
Celebrated journalist Jep Gambardella (played with mournful comic pall by Tony Servillo) wrote a great novel — 40 years ago. Since then, he's been living a life of social ascendance and moral decline, and now, in the wake of his 65th birthday blowout, he suddenly finds himself surrounded by dead …
Director Baz Luhrmann finds a suitable subject for the riotous excess of his directorial style in the riotous excess of the Jazz Age. By the time the onscreen parties lurch to a halt, you may feel a little buzzed yourself. Unfortunately, there's still rather a lot of movie remaining at …
Adam Sandler tries to prove that you can, after all, go home again. Take that, Thomas Wolfe!
A match between Rocky Balboa and the Raging Bull would have set box offices ablaze were it 1983, but back then, Robert “The Greatest Actor of His Generation” De Niro was too big to spar with a cauliflower-eared Rambonehead like Sylvester Stallone. With three decades and countless flops under their …
"Two icons of Indian cinema come face to face. This women's day, the war of good vs. evil begins."
For those who exited The Hangover Part II feeling their time and money well spent, this is the hair of the dog that bit you. The rest of humanity might consider a rabies vaccination before entering. This time, franchise creator Todd Phillips does away with the customary Mike Tyson cameo, …
In this surprisingly faithful retelling, Gretel (Molly C. Quinn) and her boyfriend Ashton (Andrew James Allen) are stoners who get their hands on a gnarly quarter-ounce of Black Forest, the El Dorado of weed. It hails from the enchanted forest, a labyrinthine grow room in the basement of the wicked …
The only honest one in the cast of this fractured fairy tale is Famke Janssen. When asked why she took the role of the witch, the actress acknowledged that she had a mortgage to pay off. Director Tommy Wirkola, who knew full well how to wrangle Nazi-zombies in Dead Snow, …
Story of the 1926 general strike in Scotland on behalf of some miners who probably wanted things like a living wage and worker safety protocols. Crazy, right? Back then, people didn't understand that corporations are people, too.