Sordid action sludge, pumped for dumb payoffs. Indonesian SWAT cops, with no plan but “kill,” assault a drug kingpin’s high-rise full of ambush traps and collateral (civilian) damage. Giving death and enduring pain are the measures of machismo. The reunion of opposing brothers is ludicrous, and redemption is nowhere to …
Built like a bullet, yet with his mind a cage of wormy lust, greed, and bigotry, cop Dave Brown (Woody Harrelson) is far below the LAPD’s finest. Oren Moverman directed as if fiercely merging Colors and Bad Lieutenant, while chief writer James Ellroy overplays his slumming zeal for lowlife crud. …
Hokey gothic fun. John Cusack is darkly brooding and boldly dying as writer Edgar Allan Poe. In foggy Baltimore he sleuths a serial killer, a creep “inspired” by his stories. It’s Theatre of Blood, if not quite so campy: breathless ambushes, underground passages, ravens, and an absurdly plot-driven story. Director …
Like a Pieter Bruegel picture reduced to a “cool” medieval fair in rural Wisconsin. Peasants, haunted by sex and Satan, do a weird sort of ancestral disco dance à la Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London.” Amanda Seyfried, looking made of cheese from the moon, casts the lunar spell of her …
The Third World lives in almost every big city. Here it is the African diaspora in Brooklyn, with a wannabe musician (Alassane Sy) from Senegal and the troubled beauty (Sky Grey) he rescues. Andrew Dosunmu directed in docu-dots of story vignettes, which add up beyond plot. A great bonus is …
Dung, ritualized. Anthony Hopkins exerts his almost papal acting authority as the old, weary, but vigilant exorcist in back-alley Rome. He inspires a doubting priest by demonstrating that the Devil lives (mostly by tormenting kids, pregnant girls, and animals). It’s like Hannibal Lecter spewing deviled ham at a midnight mass …
Based on reality, debased to clichés. Andreas Lust plays the champion runner who also robs Austrian banks, in furtive bursts. Benjamin Heisenberg directed as if he is squeezing Run Lola Run into a Brechtian meditation on capitalist despair, scratching the soul itch of a buff but boring enigma. The chases …
Denzel Washington rules again, his charisma little aged, but what’s the point of suavely dominating another spew of violent killings and barely credible suspense? Ryan Reynolds is a CIA agent whose boring life in South Africa is supercharged by the arrival of rogue super-agent Denzel. Also caught in the suction …
The charm stretches but doesn’t break in Lasse Hallström’s odd, gentle comedy about a visionary sheikh (Amr Waked) who devises a dam, river, and salmon in dry, hot Yemen. Caught up in his crazy but moving scheme are two Brit dreamers (Emily Blunt, Ewan McGregor). It has some of the …
Gianni Di Gregorio follows his modest hit Mid-August Lunch. Again he is the retired, sleepy, basset-eyed Roman treated like a servant by his sweet, controlling mom (Valeria De Franciscis, 96). Italian slacker charm is real, but there is only enough pep here for a short, stretched out as a feature. …
A spoof, not of religion but of the bloated excesses of religion in a media-driven, mega-church era. Pierce Brosnan is a suave fundamentalist fool, the Rev. Day. He runs afoul of a righteous aetheist (Ed Harris), thrills a suburban fan (Jennifer Connelly), and bewilders her doofy husband (Greg Kinnear). The …
Oh, to be young, poor, and Aborigine in the Outback, hounded by white racists and even your own dead-zoned people. Warwick Thornton’s debut film is a rather sensual vision of despair, using amateur actors, native art, ants, and a dead kangaroo, and it goes where it must. Not even Victor …
Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli cartoons Mary Norton’s famous story The Borrowers, with Miyazaki scripting and disciple Hiromasa Yonebayashi directing the animation house style of bucolic realism: lush plants, rain, clouds, cute critters, Victorian décor, hybrid (mainly Caucasian) ethnicity. Tiny, very human squatters below the floorboards fear the big “human beings” …
Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli cartoons Mary Norton’s famous story The Borrowers, with Miyazaki scripting and disciple Hiromasa Yonebayashi directing the animation house style of bucolic realism: lush plants, rain, clouds, cute critters, Victorian décor, hybrid (mainly Caucasian) ethnicity. Tiny, very human squatters below the floorboards fear the big “human beings” …
As Formula One auto racing became a more tech-driven big biz, Ayrton Senna was a very human hero, a three-time world champ and Brazil’s greatest sportsman since Pelé. Lean, handsome, a bit gawky, he remains a public idol in Asif Kapadia’s documentary, but maybe there wasn’t a whole lot of …