A hot mess. Iron Man 3 does what a third installment tends to do: revisit the themes of the first (personal failings giving rise to public disasters), make everything bigger and more complicated, and then deliver some kind of grand resolution. And while director Shane Black brings a manic energy …
A hot mess. Iron Man 3 does what a third installment tends to do: revisit the themes of the first (personal failings giving rise to public disasters), make everything bigger and more complicated, and then deliver some kind of grand resolution. And while director Shane Black brings a manic energy …
Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but then, you knew that) sits down with famous old thinky-type Noam Chomsky and listens to him say, "Visual experience is just stimulations of the retina that we impose an extremely rigid interpretation on." To which Gondry hopefully replies, "Have you seen …
The emphasis of Bad Grandpa is not so much on the daredevil stunts that made household names of Johnny Knoxville and the Jackass brand. Nor is there, apart from decorating the wall of a small town eatery with a duodenal Dali, much of the traditional dependence on doody humor. Instead, …
A bag containing cholesterol-free, nutrient-dense seeds that have the power to change the world falls into the wrong hands. Fee-fi-ho-hum! All of the costumes, elaborate sets, lush cinematography (thank you, Newton Thomas Sigel!), and naturalistic use of depth don’t amount to a hill of beans in this giant time-slayer. Talk …
The issue is the opening of a Carmelite convent in Auschwitz — Catholic nuns and symbols in "the biggest Jewish cemetery in the world." The nuns see it as honoring Edith Stein, a Jewish convert who became a Carmelite and died in the camp. The Polish Pope John Paul II …
Just in time for the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy, here comes a documentary about the hawkish military-intelligence types who were so mad about the way he was handling Cuba and Vietnam and communism in general that they could just...well, you know.
“My headache is coming,” Jimmy P. (Benicio del Toro) announces, as sure as a lycanthrope foretells a full moon. This time del Toro isn’t cast a wolfman and the reason behind the pending pain is a lot harder to diagnose in director Arnaud Desplechin’s fact-based, back-to-the-“snake pit” period account of …
Apple guru Steve Jobs was, according to Jobs, a casual liar, a cheat in matters both professional and personal, an arrogant asshole, a clever huckster, a superlative bullshitter, a rampant egotist, a canny opportunist, a disloyal business partner, a hot-tempered megalomaniac, a cowardly cur when it came to accepting responsibility …
A good time for people who think that failed attempts at greatness are more fun to recount than successful ones. In telling the story of how he almost managed to make the movie version of Frank Herbert's sci-fi classic Dune, cult filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky comes off as an alternately charming …
Not for nothing does the film's poster evoke the classic VHS covers of yore. Director Don Coscarelli expertly blends the horror and comedy of his earlier work (Phantasm, Bubba Ho-Tep) in a flimsy, sprawling story featuring that great '80s standby, the portal to another dimension. (And whaddya know; that dimension …
This film is rated PG. That means "Parental Guidance is suggested." Please, parents — guide your children.
Queasy-making "real-life superhero" story, not so much for the graphic, nasty violence (though there is plenty of that) as for its roller coaster of tonal shifts. Emotionally shattering events — the murder of a father, the accidental killing of a mother, the slaughter of ten policemen in broad daylight on …
A commanding title with a game cast, slugging their hearts out to bring a fascinating, seldom-told story to life. But all first-time writer-director John Krokidas can spoon up is detached melodrama. In 1944, Lucien Carr (Leo DiCaprio’s eerie "evil twin," Dane DeHaan), one of the forgotten members of the "Beat …