A violent drizzle of dung. Nicolas Cage is the diamond seller whose lavish home, wall safe, elegant wife (Nicole Kidman), and sex-bait daughter tempt stupid creeps to terrorize them. The villains are preening but instantly forgettable, exposing their crude backstories and motives while director Joel Schumacher revels in every ridiculous …
Steve Coogan and chum Rob Brydon, sort of playing themselves, drive around North England, sample gourmet restaurants, comically recite poetry, needle one another, and offer competing impressions (Coogan’s Michael Caine is slightly better, but Brydon is ace with Anthony Hopkins). Coogan is rather draggy, fretting about his career and serially …
A slide into terminal cuteness, as Norwegian teen Alma (Helene Bergsholm) is branded a slut and “pervo” when the boy she desires comes on too strong. Her story is not drama, not comedy, not much at all. Jannicke Systad Jacobsen’s frank but trite movie fades into its pale, Nordic photography.
Not the Sarah Palin documentary, nor the John Wayne Western. In this documentary, coach Bill Courtney turns around a high school football team in North Memphis, Tennessee. He is a remarkable man, not a plaster hero. The struggle to make the school’s first playoff in 110 years becomes less involving …
A married fisherman (Cristian Mercado) is the rising alpha male of his Peruvian, very Catholic village. His secretive gay love for a visiting artist puts all at risk. Honest acting and strong seaside atmosphere sustain Javier Fuentes-León’s film, though a ghostly dream element is sutured in with a certain strain. …
What’s unknown is why they bothered. Liam Neeson goes to Berlin, is smashed into a coma, emerges from it. The movie doesn’t. He hustles through a hectic plot that seems like a close-out sale on thrillers. Flushed away are Aidan Quinn, Frank Langella, Diane Kruger, and Sebastian Koch, though Bruno …
Deep spirituality turns vague and hazy in religious films, like 3D for which only God has the glasses. But Margarethe von Trotta’s film about 12th-century nun and brilliant scholar Hildegard (Barbara Sukowa) reveals vivid, involving aspects of her brave, even feminist life, often sensual in a cloistered way. The Gothic …
Septic sludge, or in ’60s film lingo, Mondo Crappo. This crime melodrama is the first feature created indigenously in the former Belgian Congo, so why does “visionary” auteur Djo Munga make Kinshasa look like a blocked toilet? This spew of blaxploitation clichés with a Third World spin offers violence, torture, …
Brazilian émigré artist Vik Muniz, glowing with New York success, returns to Rio. At the immense city dump, he photographs scavengers who embellish their portraits with trash. Hard lives are recycled as exuberant art. Lucy Walker’s sensual documentary doesn’t slum to mock, nor to protest, and has genuine human interest.
Madonna’s gilded, google-eyed take on how American divorcée Wallis Simpson became the Duchess of Windsor after her “great love” for Britain’s Edward VIII led to his 1937 abdication. E. (James D’Arcy) is all heart and no brain, while W. (very sharp Andrea Riseborough) is a chic, catty grabber. Taffy-headed director/writer …
Ben Mee (Matt Damon) leaves print journalism to buy and run a small zoo. Scarlett Johansson, looking safari bronzed, is the main animal keeper. The critters are delightful, and the winsome cast includes infallibly funny Thomas Haden Church, delightful teen Elle Fanning, and adorable mascot Maggie Elizabeth Jones. Drawn from …
Rending, harrowing, moving. This documentary by David Weissman and Bill Weber uses recent interviews and vintage photos and clips to fathom the AIDS epidemic, which nearly cratered the San Francisco gay community in the ’80s. There are five main survivor-witnesses, including an artist whose aged face is the spiritual map …
As Ally Darling, who calls herself “a jobless whore who slept with 20 men,” Anna Faris is a doll of chipmunky charm, with the cutest vocal scratch since June Allyson. She’s the fun zip in this bubble-headed comedy in which she trawls those 20 to find Mr. Right, slowly realizing …