Differently gifted paranormals, on the model of the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, battle over a wonder drug in a secreted syringe in Hong Kong. The possibilities are endless, and so, in consequence, is the tedium. Paul McGuigan’s hopped-up direction only increases it. Chris Evans, Dakota Fanning, Camilla Belle, Djimon …
Disney revisits the titular summit, thirty years later, but not to pick up the paranormal adolescents in middle age. (Kim Richards and Ike Eisenmann, the original kids of Escape from… and Return to…, can be spotted in bit parts.) The action is ineptly directed by Andy Fickman, and Dwayne “The …
Third-century Chinese war story, a two-and-a-half-hour reduction of what was twice that long in its native land, released there in two parts. Two and a half hours seem more than too much, although any complaints about the mess of it, the incoherent jumble, might invite a challenge from its partisans …
Not just one movie; three separate but connected movies set in 1974, 1980, and 1983, with three separate and unconnected directors (Julian Jarrold, James Marsh, Anand Tucker, in order), and three separate protagonists (a mop-haired cub reporter, a cold-case special investigator, and a portly attorney, played in turn by Andrew …
Not just one movie; three separate but connected movies set in 1974, 1980, and 1983, with three separate and unconnected directors (Julian Jarrold, James Marsh, Anand Tucker, in order), and three separate protagonists (a mop-haired cub reporter, a cold-case special investigator, and a portly attorney, played in turn by Andrew …
Not just one movie; three separate but connected movies set in 1974, 1980, and 1983, with three separate and unconnected directors (Julian Jarrold, James Marsh, Anand Tucker, in order), and three separate protagonists (a mop-haired cub reporter, a cold-case special investigator, and a portly attorney, played in turn by Andrew …
From the novel by Cormac McCarthy, a post-apocalyptic road movie of a man, a boy, a gray wasteland, and roving bands of ragtag cannibals whom Mad Max would have blown away with a sneeze. Naturalistic science fiction, it amounts to an anti-2012 (careful what you wish for) from the maker …
From Argentina, an old-fashioned slick manipulative commercial entertainment that took home the Oscar for foreign film. Firm-footed, smooth-surfaced, it centers on a retired public prosecutor struggling to write a novel on a nagging 20-year-old case, the rape and murder of a newlywed schoolteacher. Generating suspense partly through its coyness as …
Largely hand-drawn animation, flat and unfluid, to mythologize the creation of a Medieval Irish illuminated manuscript, from which numerous visual motifs have been lifted. An esoteric cartoon (who’s it for?) to say the least, soporific to say the worst, so stylized as to eliminate the menace from a pack of …
R.J. Cutler’s documentary version of The Devil Wears Prada, a revealing inside look at the putting-together of the year’s fattest issue of Vogue, what turns out to be history’s fattest issue ever. The bleeding and sweating, the fighting and dying, over the tiniest details will retain a degree of fascination …
At bottom, the Coen brothers' most "personal" work. To be sure, they've never been reduced to hired hands. They've always had the good fortune to be able to make the films they wanted to make, films that reflected their personal tastes and personal attitudes and personal interests and personal viewpoints. …
Horrors! A Sherlock Holmes for the 21st Century, a man of action, a martial artist, more of a 19th-century James Bond or alternatively an urban Wild Wild West-erner, with a pretty-boy Dr. Watson (Jude Law) and a megalomaniacal archenemy (Mark Strong) who foretells “a journey that will twist the very …
Nonlinearity for kids. Aggressively cute, garishly bright family fantasy mashes together, in no particular order, a magical multicolor Wishing Rock, gherkin-sized aliens, a giant booger, a telepathic baby, Siamese-twin spouses, among other things. Respectable cast above the tot level: Leslie Mann, Jon Cryer, Kat Dennings, William H. Macy, James Spader. …
Pothead psychotherapist, best-selling author of Happiness Now, unhinged by his wife’s suicide, unshaven, unresponsive, uninterested. His Tinsel Town zip code opens the door to all manner of well-known and well-worn Hollywood types (superagent, aging actress, alcoholic actor, aspiring screenwriter, slutty starlet, etc.), but despite the range of material and of …