A slumming decline from the bold, cutting intelligence that Errol Morris showed in The Thin Blue Line and other films. His documentary subject is Joyce McKinney, a former Wyoming beauty queen turned sex worker and minor celebrity. Her obsessive fling with a shocked Mormon missionary became tabloid fodder in Britain. …
Michael Shannon, who often seems like Frankenstein looking sadly for his doctor, plays a scared and scary guy in the flat Midwest. His sinister dreams and fantasies clue him that a vast storm is coming, and he hurls his fragile family into panic by building a big shelter (he already …
Estonia, following long repression by Marxism, is depressed by predatory capitalism in Veiko Õunpuu’s film about a rising middleman (Taavi Eelmaa) whose life is a Kafka maze of weird, deadpan events. Strikingly photographed in black and white, the movie is a rummage sale of old surrealist or vanguard (Bergman, Antonioni, …
Roland Joffé remains the thick, ponderous director who made The Mission and The Killing Fields. It takes some time to see that this lavish but feeble drama set mostly in the Spanish Civil War is a chapel candle for Josemaría Escrivá, founder of the rightist Catholic organization Opus Dei. Charlie …
If only we had a thousand words for it, but here goes: Eddie Murphy cranks up loud and even funny as Jack, a motormouth Hollywood agent, but then the comical “concept” shifts him into mugging mutely because a guru (Cliff Curtis) and a mystic Bodhi tree want Jack to hear …
Not quite Dumas, but no dummy. The brash new Muskies: Athos (Matthew Macfadyen), Aramis (Luke Evans), Porthos (Ray Stevenson), plus D’Artagnan (Logan Lerman) like a 17th-century mall dude. Add saucy, athletic Milady (Milla Jovovich), haughty Duke of Buckingham (Orlando Bloom), cruel Rochefort (Mads Mikkelsen), and not-very-Catholic Cardinal Richelieu (Christoph Waltz): …
How many movies are life affirming? This one is. Inspiration floods Mark Landsman’s documentary about the Kashmere Stage Band, a bunch of black high-schoolers in Houston led to jazzy heights by their teacher and leader, the tough and tireless master of sonic funk Conrad “Prof” Johnson. Their ’70s sound remains …
An intricate condensation of John le Carré’s novel, previously a BBC sprawler starring Alec Guinness. As the very dry, very British spy master Smiley, Gary Oldman is nearly at Sir Alec’s level. Tomas Alfredson’s film is all micro-plot observation, with expert details that link, fester, and spin webs. Sad, brainy, …
Tiny, for sure. Director and writer Lena Dunham stars as Aura, back at home in Tribeca after college and feeling bored, fat, and underloved. Almost every feeling and glib chat is encased in attitude. Using Dunham’s family and friends, this is like a hipper, Manhattan version of Henry Jaglom’s vanity …
True to title, it pops up but then lies flat. The memoir of British celebrity-chef Nigel Slater was turned by S.J. Clarkson into this quaint coming-out fable. His perky, retro, storybook styling serves the humor about bad British cuisine, but larger emotional themes go hungry. Oscar Kennedy is boy Nigel …
Bold colors, Indian food, and cute accents dominate a “foodie comedy” about an aspiring chef. He saves the family restaurant in New York with a taxi-driving master of Indian cuisine, acted by impish scene-stealer Naseeruddin Shah. Aasif Mandvi of The Daily Show scripted from his play and stars. He lacks …
Angelina Jolie is a comatose sculpture in this slack, dated load of thriller clichés. She glides her deadpan “acting” and mighty cheekbones around a postcard Venice, and Johnny Depp tags along like a puzzled puppy. The film achieves vacant star display and the worst canal chase ever, while wasting Venice, …
Rage about elite-hustler Bernie Madoff gets hashed into Brett Ratner’s heist comedy. Alan Alda plays the smug, Madoff-ian figure, who even scams the pensions of the decent, obsequious people who run his luxury high-rise. The building manager (Ben Stiller) looks for payback, with a milquetoast (Matthew Broderick), a nerd (Casey …
A beautifully rooted film with a spiritual grip. Charlotte Gainsbourg is the French-born wife of an Aussie man who suddenly dies, leaving her with several kids in a ramshackle house near a grand Moreton Bay fig tree. She and the daughter (played as a bright dreamer by very fine Morgana …
In only his fifth film in 38 years, eye-of-God director Terrence Malick wraps the pains of a family in ’50s Texas (partly based on his youth) in a bloated burrito of suffocating pomposity. The “wow” nature visuals, cosmic perspective, and solemn, whispery spirituality destroy any chance for real, poetic profundity. …