Tom Cruise returns, and reliably so, to his role as gadget-happy superspy Ethan Hunt, but the real star is director Brad Bird, trying his hand at live action after a successful stint in the animated world. Happily, he brings the best parts of his cartoony past with him, creating wild …
A rare sports movie with a brain. Brad Pitt does perhaps his best star acting as Billy Beane, the Oakland Athletics general manager who, sick of being looted of talent by big-money teams like the Yankees, opted for a “sabermetrics” approach using computers ands the adviee of a smart, chubby …
Selena Gomez’s girlish features are a tough sell in this coming-of-age role. The story centers on Grace, who is off to Paris as a graduation present with her stepsister and best friend in tow. Through a case of mistaken identity (Gomez playing double duty), the trio is swept off to …
Apparently, you are not the only one who enjoys reciting Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Using members of his own family, director René Féret shows us the Mozart family as an exploited traveling act, gathering crumbs from the rich. He also seeks to elevate Wolfgang’s sister Nannerl (Marie Féret) as feminist martyr, her gifts quashed by the father’s preference for genius. A contrived plot involving …
Yes, it’s a Jim Carrey vehicle about a wisecracking corporate greedhead who rediscovers what really matters (wife, kids, etc.), thanks to a waddle of penguins that take up residence in his swanky NYC apartment. But this time there’s pain behind the joker’s mask, and the mask itself has a pleasing …
Any similarities between Jim Henson’s antron-fleece assemblage and hack-screenwriter Jason Segel’s fleece job are coincidental. Bright lights, brittle colors, forced cheer, and production numbers lifted from a Dr. Pepper commercial (and backed by a knitting-needles-through-your-ears score) combine for a fatal dose of nostalgia. In the past, at least we had …
J.K. Simmons plays a nice, wonky engineer who expels his hippie son in the late ’60s for loving rebel rock. Years later, the grown kid (Lou Taylor Pucci) returns with a benign brain tumor, soon removed. But he’s mute, and only those groovy old tunes can open him up for …
Gérard Depardieu puts his unwieldy bulk and asymmetrical face to excellent use as a village simpleton who befriends an elderly intellectual woman after the two discover a mutual interest in pigeons. Their subsequent shared adventure into the world of words is a pleasure to look at and an even greater …
Ex-Muscovite Robin Hessman’s vivid documentary on Soviet-era schoolmates, now grown. With wistful or embittered insight, not nostalgia, they recall their youth in the dying USSR. There are two jaded teachers, a weary subway musician, a cynical venture capitalist, a charming wage slave, and a delightful teen named Mark who prefers …
Over four hours of the last great achievement of prolific, Chilean-born master Raúl Ruiz (the Euro-TV version has six hours). A flowing tapestry of stories set in 19th century Portugal, from a classic novel, it involves mostly a young boy, a priest and a dense, Catholic, convulsing society that (like …
A gossipy peekaboo based on Colin Clark’s memoir as an assistant on the English set of 1957’s The Prince and the Showgirl. He has a crush on Marilyn Monroe, who reciprocates voluptuously (this may be mostly imagined), while costar and director Laurence Olivier fumes. Eddie Redmayne is appealing as coltish …
The giant bag of a Texas prison lawnmower bursts open, giving birth to scraggly escapee Matt O’Leary. Expectations are flattened when this provocative opening sequence is immediately followed by a boner joke: Rachael Harris’ husband of 25 years wakes up with wood. When his horny spouse decides to seize the …
Another holiday slaughtered, processed, shrink wrapped, and shipped to market by director Garry Marshall (Valentine’s Day). Another massive cast (Ashton Kutcher as the world’s prettiest grubby hipster, Katherine Heigl as a jilted caterer, etc.), another whirlwind of plotlines and significances: birth, death, first kisses, dreams come true, marriage, romance. Was …