What do you get when you combine High School Musical and Twilight? Not much, as evidenced by this bargain-basement big-screen blow up of the even more parsimonious web series of the same name. Lucas Grabeel, Drew Seeley, and Adrian Slade form the goth romantic triangle amidst a deafening, puerile musical …
An account of a family caught, with tens of thousands of strangers, in the mayhem of one of the worst natural catastrophes of our time.
A talky talking-heads documentary, but one that spins a tale dizzying enough to keep the drama going (with a little help from old home video and dramatic re-enactment). When Nicholas Barclay was 13, he disappeared from the streets of San Antonio. Three and a half years later, his family gets …
One of our finest Holocaust dramas. Robert Wieckiewicz is wonderful, but not posingly wonderful, as Poldek. The Catholic sewer-worker saved some Jews as the Nazis wiped out the ghetto in Lvov (then Poland, now Ukraine) in the year of hell, 1944. Capping a fine career, director Agnieszka Holland shows sewer …
French domestic mystery maitre Francois Ozon.
There is a spot on God’s green earth, Ukerewe Island in Tanzania to be exact, where witch doctors continue to prescribe the severed limbs of albinos as good luck charms to patients looking for eternal prosperity. After a rash of 43 murders, two men with albinism — Vedastus, a teenager …
Francois Cluzet’s resemblance to Dustin Hoffman continues, so does his subtle talent. As a rich, French quadriplegic, he is all sharp, suave nuances as a cocky new caregiver (Omar Sy) injects his limited existence with fun and warmth. Sy overplays dude-ness, but the two are amusing and touching together, and …
"Today, a female soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire.” This is a documentary about that.
Britain’s greatest prime minister since Churchill is seen through a glass, darkly — the darkness of dementia closing in. Her bouffant crown of hair is gone, but flickering memories turn into brisk flashbacks of the glory years. Meryl Streep is quite touching as Margaret Thatcher in retirement and is a …
The Maldives — a nation of islands south of Sri Lanka that survived a long dictatorship and a terrible tsunami — is now sinking below the ocean rise caused by global warming. Doubt it? See the film. The film’s young, brave, short, handsome, and very bright President Mohamed Nasheed is …
"A Tom Cruise Production" —it's the first thing you see on the screen, and it's all there is to know. Here, he plays Jack Reacher, an invincible, invisible genius who appears out of the mists of cliche to investigate a rogue sniper's shooting spree. (The opening scene, in which a …
Of Mice and Men for the mumblecore set. Were it not for happenstance and a zoom lens that appears slightly dislodged from its turret so as to artlessly dart at and away from its subjects, filmmakers Jay and Mark Duplass would have no idea how to tell a story. Unskilled …
How far would you go to protect the family dairy business? Probably not as far as these people. Stars Toni Servillo, Remo Girone, and Sarah Felberbaum.