The most Hitchcockean director to surf the famous French New Wave of cinema, the literate, brilliant, now-gone Claude Chabrol provides a last masterwork in a blithely casual, rather Altman-like manner. The plot, a holiday ramble of murder suspects and erotic hooks in pretty Nimes, France, stars Gérard Depardieu as the …
Steve James (Hoop Dreams) spent a year documenting the efforts of a trio of reformed hardcore gangbangers working to bring peace to Chicago’s volatile Englewood neighborhood. Instead of touting sports or rap music as the golden ticket, the “violence interrupters” champion a psychological approach to peaceful coexistence in an urban …
A big hit at last year’s San Diego Asian Film Festival finally gets a well-deserved theatrical release. After losing one of his two dads in a car accident, a young boy quickly becomes the focal point of a fierce custody battle after the will grants his aunt sole custody. You’re …
If time were currency, would you hoard it for eternal life or make every day a risky spree of mortality? In the near-future of an L.A. shot with elegant noir streamlining by Roger Deakins and directed by Kiwi-Brit stylist Andrew Niccol (Gattaca), people live to 25, stop aging, and then …
Werner Herzog will go anywhere for film discovery, and this is one of his better documentaries. In the piney woods north of Houston, he found ugly crime scenes and in a prison two convicted killers who murdered for a joyride. One is a smiling sociopath who thinks lethal injection will …
Gore and idiotic plotting from South Korean director Kim Ji-woon. A pregnant woman is butchered by a sexual psychotic, then the creep exchanges ambushes and sadistic shockers with a “special agent” who is (of course) the woman’s fiancé. Apart from Lee Mogae’s atmospheric imagery, this is simply a wallow. Humor: …
A wise film from director Hirokazu Koreeda, one that knows kids for what they are: not miniature adults, not the masters of their own magical kingdoms, but newcomers struggling to navigate by their own imperfect charts. Twelve-year-old Koichi dreams of reuniting his divorced parents -- the pain of his family’s …
A film about the perils of success. Watch Al Pacino do his damnedest to shed his legacy (and goof on his beloved Shakespeare while he’s at it). Watch Adam Sandler take the lash to himself for getting rich via crass hackwork. Watch them both pretend that what they really want …
The latest Jane Eyre movie is not an advance — despite fine settings, a haughty, soul-scarred Rochester portrayed by Michael Fassbender, and ace supporting figures (Judi Dench, Jamie Bell, Sally Hawkins). The story is scrambled by tricky time jumps and clumsily handled by director Cary Fukunaga. The main deficit is …
Under the stone-slab “classical” direction of Clint Eastwood, Leonardo DiCaprio dutifully plays J. Edgar Hoover as an anal-retentive power freak and mama’s boy (Judi Dench is mom). Building the FBI, he strikes fierce poses but remains a weak, petty neurotic. Writer Dustin Lance Black (Milk) never digs very far, and …
Rowan Atkinson, the pipsqueak packet of comical nonsense, returns as Johnny, Britain’s Clouseau (Clueless?) in a James Bond mode. It’s silly beyond silly, but the deft star knows how to do sight gags, blithely uses spy devices such as the “voice-change travel lozenge,” and enunciates such funny lines as “Ambrose, …
Cuban zombie thriller by writer/director Alejandro Brugués. Starring Alexis Díaz de Villegas, Jorge Molina and Andrea Duro. In Spanish.
Bright colors, ’toony graphics, abundant closeups — mostly of adorable redhead Judy (Jordana Beatty, soon to be filmed as fabled Eloise of the Plaza Hotel). She is like a typhoon sugar high, her kid brother is named Stink, and Aunt Opal (Heather Graham) is also juvenile. The ancestral muse is …
Pretty, lavishly educated Sabrina (Paula Patton) opts to marry the sexy, lower-born Jason (Laz Alonso) at her parents’ huge beach home. Her snooty mom (Angela Bassett) can’t stand the groom’s mother (Loretta Devine), a tough workin’ gal whose touchy roots pride blasts open old secrets. Mildly risqué jokes and snarks …