More Cheech than Chong, Ned (Paul Rudd) is no idiot, but his goof-along sweetness and lack of drive make him an easy butt for the jokes and verdicts of his more structured sisters. They are richly played by Kathryn Hahn, Elizabeth Banks, Emily Mortimer, and Zooey Deschanel (who often seems …
Rachid Bouchareb’s churning film is like an Algerian-Islamic take on The Battle of Algiers, though set mostly in slum Paris and packed with American-gangster clichés. Three émigré, brothers fight the French as revolutionaries and simply to survive. Ironically, the movie seems to sustain the old, racist, French-colonial claim that the …
Made with Times support but more than a rah-rah, Andrew Rossi’s documentary shows the travails and enduring, workaholic pride of a great newspaper during tough times. Tall, caustic, croaky-voiced reporter David Carr is charismatic, but the hero of the film is print journalism, practiced with fierce application, although mistakes and …
Slightly boyish, sweetly smiling Alike (Adepero Oduye) suspects she may be gay, and a bold new friend (Aasha Davis) leads her to a lesbian dance club that Alike’s cop father (Charles Parnell) sees as a cesspool. His macho anxiety stifles her coming out, as does her devout, hovering mom (Kim …
Eileen (Kathleen Turner) hopes to be Catholic Woman of the Year, even though she drops holy wafers on the church floor near her priest (Richard Chamberlain). Onward to douchebag humor! Eileen, torn up about her lesbian daughter (Emily Deschanel), starts to feel like a nun in hell. In Anne Renton’s …
Kenneth Bowser’s talking-and-singing-heads film is about ’60s folk troubadour and tireless activist Ochs, who seems almost as oppressed by the fame of Bob Dylan as by the Vietnam War. A high-pitched singer, witty lyricist, and true warrior for good causes, Ochs comes off as a gutsy dreamer whose personal charm …
An elegant, heartfelt, never-sappy salute to the late German choreographer Philippina “Pina” Bausch and her dancers. Veteran fan and auteur Wim Wenders uses 3-D superbly to put us inside intensely kinetic, body-stressing dances (most in short form). They can be a little retro-vanguard but are always vivid, witty, and/or beautiful. …
The third sequel has more story focus, although the silly, stretched plot is about finding the Fountain of Youth. Johnny Depp, as rigged-up as any sailing vessel, does his wry, sporty, mincing schtick as Jack Sparrow. With grungy villain support from Ian McShane and Geoffrey Rush, sexy but decorative work …
A delicate, autumnal film concerning a Korean lady afflicted by a difficult grandson and by her incipient Alzheimer’s. As troubles mount, poetry becomes her bridge to stoical consolation, though final eloquence is tied on like a ribbon. Chang-dong Lee directed with felicity, as if channeling echoes of the more rigorous …
Stealing its title from the great 1967 Lee Marvin film, this Euro-trash thriller directed by Fred Cavayé stars Gilles Lellouche as a mild Parisian nurse who becomes a Real Man by reclaiming his pregnant wife from drug gangsters. One of them, played by Roschdy Zem, has some of the old …
A churning, driven French film about a child-protection unit of the Paris police and how the harsh impact of their work (re: prostitution, violence, abandonment, pedophilia) lacerates their lives even as it bonds them. The director Maïwenn cast herself as a photographer who falls for the unit’s sensitive hothead (vivid …
One more intelligent, well-made film from France’s Bertrand Tavernier, yet with little creative excitement. The religious wars of the 16th Century background a tale of romantic obsession, high-born intrigue, forced marriage, a golden beauty (Mélanie Thierry), and a minor aristocrat (Lambert Wilson) sick of war. The castles, horses, costumes, and …
A long-planned, crushingly filmed prequel to Alien, with director Ridley Scott again insulting his high achievement in Blade Runner. Many borrowed themes get rummaged together with absurd effects, dismal violence, and self-administered surgery by a scientist (Noomi Rapace) that seems both for and against abortion (in this ugly, loopy vision, …
Grinning, giddy Tanna Frederick continues her rise to buzzy stardom, at least in the world of Henry Jaglom’s L.A. vanity movies. After the opening logo (a shot of Orson Welles’s face), all style vanishes, the plot starts to curdle, and we are left in the Jaglom zone of sterile lighting …
Set in sunny Corsica, it stars Sandrine Bonnaire as a bored hotel maid saved by discovering chess. Kevin Kline is the suave American widower who teaches her the art of the game (his French is fine, his English better as he recites Blake’s poem “The Tyger”). Chess becomes the analog …