Sloppy, amusing, often engaging documentary using long-hidden color film of the since-fabled 1964 cross-country bus trip by writer Ken Kesey and his frequently buzzed (or bored) Merry Pranksters. Motormouth macho hipster Neal Cassady is often stoned and often behind the wheel. Also seen: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Jerry …
Carl Colby traces the life of his father William, who rose from OSS paratrooper to major CIA “spook” during the Cold War and Vietnam, going deeper into the secretive maze that finally consumed him as the agency’s head during the scandals of the Nixon/Ford era. Despite strong file footage and …
Anna Paquin, who gave a great kid’s performance in The Piano, offers a great adolescent performance as Lisa. Bright, snarky, spoiled, and neurotic about her broken family in New York, she drives her decent mom (J. Smith-Cameron) nearly crazy by becoming a drama diva. The cause is her role in …
Not bad, if you want the 2008 financial collapse reduced to an adrenalized ego showdown in f-wordy debt to David Mamet. Kevin Spacey is the greed pig who squishes best. Jeremy Irons is the predator who heads the investment firm, seeming to welcome disaster with a shark’s appetite. Writer-director J.C. …
The 1966 sci-fi joker Mars Needs Women is Disneyfied by director and writer Simon Wells. As pop entertainment, his movie is slick but also superior, a charming 3-D animation about a boy who goes to Mars to rescue his abducted mom. Kids probably won’t get the nods to Reagan and …
Martha strives to recover from a grungy cult group. Director Sean Durkin intercuts timeframes and creates a twilight sadness. The cult leader (John Hawkes) sings like Charles Manson trying to be Leonard Cohen, and as part of Martha’s “cleansing” he provides rape. As morose, inarticulate Martha, Elizabeth Olsen (sister of …
A sympathetic take on highly imaginative Mark Hogancamp, an Upstate New Yorker whose 2000 trauma (loss of memory and more, due to a vicious beating by bar louts) led him to create a therapeutic world of military dress-up dolls and sexy little vamps. Their WWII in Marwencol, a toy-scale Belgian …
Filmed in a static, pedestrian style, the story never surfaces above its clichéd roots. Jason Statham takes on the role of assassin mentor to a lost cause with temper issues. Ben Foster, in the latter role, is reduced to the loose cannon, the sidekick. Statham attempts to preserve his rugged, …
A brooding Western, gaunt as a desert bone, made by Kelly Reichardt with writer Jonathan Raymond and her favorite star, Michelle Williams. As a bonnet-topped gal rich in grit, Williams challenges the dazed males (Will Patton, Paul Dano, Bruce Greenwood) whose little wagon train is lost in 19th-century Oregon. Taciturn …
An underage virgin (Dustin Ingram) embarks on a road trip to meet the aging porn star of his dreams (Kim Cattrall). Newcomer Ingram brings enough guileless candor to defray the irritating traits generally assigned to Hollywood dorks. Writer-director Keith Bearden sees to it that the characters are more than cursory …
At a swank European estate that is mainly a golf course, bored heiress Kirsten Dunst wanders, frets, bathes, and has sex in a sand trap (but not with her dull new groom). Her impish father (John Hurt) steals silver spoons. Kiefer Sutherland has tantrums, Charlotte Rampling is bitter, Charlotte Gainsbourg …
One of Woody Allen’s mostly smoothly enjoyable entertainments. Like Stanley Donen’s Funny Face and Richard Linklater’s Before Sunset, it is a devotional candle of the American love of La Belle Paris. The blond wick who lights up for joy is Owen Wilson as Gil, a “Hollywood hack,” aspiring novelist, and …
A great film based on a masterpiece. Polish director Lech Majewski uses Pieter Bruegel’s grand The Procession to Calvary in Vienna to open up its world. At the same time, the actors and vignettes seem to fold into the painting, achieving a hybrid beauty and late-medieval power. Not much talk, …
A drama of Palestinian survival, mostly about the founder of a rescue home for girls, played as a stern medallion of courage by Hiam Abbass, and one of her students (Freida Pinto). Julian Schnabel’s movie, partly rooted in fact, becomes a drab collage of filming choices: news clips, trembling camera …