Andrew Carnegie envisioned a New York City with a library within walking distance of every resident’s doorstep. Frederick Wiseman’s documentary takes us on a guided tour of several. Public libraries are neighborhood oases, some of the few safe and welcoming spaces left in the world. From an intimate reading-group discussion …
Kirk Cameron (Like Father Like Son) returns... but not as the real-life marathon runner and college professor trying not to let a bum knee get in the way of a race. That honor goes to Leland Klassen. Here's hoping that this time the terms faith-based and artistically bankrupt don't go …
The Man, the Marvel, the Movie! A tribute documentary from Jonathan Josell.
From the Philippines comes this "sexy action-comedy" about a trio of female super agents working undercover as massage therapists. What will they think of next? Chris Martinez directs.
Jean-Luc Godard was 33 when he starred in Agnes Varda’s short comedy The Fiancés of the MacDonald Bridge. That’s the same age as the photographer JR, the sole person ever to share a director’s credit with the New Wave pioneer, and also her co-star here. By Varda’s own admission, an …
No smoking in the house, if you read a book put it back where you found it, and while you’re at it, take the chance to bang one of the neighbors. Those are but three of the edicts Bruno (Cristián Carvajal) assigns his distant relative Martin (Jorge Becker) after the …
A pre-op transsexual’s (Daniele Vega) word begins caving in after the death of her divorced, much-older boyfriend, mostly because it gives his largely intolerant family the opportunity to make her life miserable. Vega’s performance is riveting, but writer and co-director Sebastián Leilo’s use of sex and gender to shape his …
Late in the race, the fast-cars franchise twists open the nitrous and roars back to life, thanks to a standout villain (an icy cool Charlize Theron), a pleasing measure of self-consciousness about its own tropes and themes (what is family, anyway?), and better writing and humor (nitrous is also laughing …
Owen WIlson and Ed Helms star as a pair of fraternal twins in search of their birth father. Stepping behind the camera for the first time is cinematographer Lawrence Sher (The Dukes of Hazzard, The Hangover(s)).
That it took ten minutes to realize that Félicité wasn’t a documentary was itself a miracle, as the camera wound sinuously through a sparsely populated dance floor in a tottering nightclub, picking up conversations that alternated between rape and romance. And the next 50 minutes — spent following the titular …
Whitney Cummings is best known for her raunchily commendable work as a Comedy Central Roast Mistress. Here she makes her directorial debut, paired opposite Sofia Vergara, for an occasionally amusing look at the science behind our romantic fluffs. Through with romance, a nerdy neuroscientist (Cummings) with a minor in clairvoyance …
Author Munro Leaf’s beloved children’s book is a pacifist primer intended to advise kids on how not to follow in the kamikaze footsteps of jingoistic bovines eager to lay down their lives on the field of honor. Disney’s 1938 short will forever remain the definitive adaptation, but that wasn’t enough …
Watching contract players Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan mechanically mate is as erotically unfulfilling as studying the reproductive habits of amoeba. The promising “Revenge of the Sub” subplot hinted at in the trailer takes up maybe five minutes of screen time. The rest is squandered on tortured Dornan promising he’ll …