Rachel Weisz is again the credible center of a movie not likely to find a wide audience (a plex-packer this isn’t). In Larysa Kondracki’s urgent film, Weisz plays a U.N. peace force recruit who brings direct, Nebraskan integrity to a rotten situation in Bosnia. Many of her new comrades sell …
They booze in 1975 Brooklyn. It’s as if director John Gray popped Scorsese’s Mean Streets (1973) as instant corn. Other generic sources are writers Arthur Miller and James T. Farrell, and tons of TV. Nick Thurston is a gentle, aspiring artist whose dumb brother (Geoffrey Wigdor) is a criminal hothead. …
Looking like a bleached bone — the whitest person in a French African colony disintegrating into “liberty” — Isabelle Huppert holds on to her coffee plantation like Scarlett defending Tara. Huppert has the sly charisma of a veteran star. Director Claire Denis’s feeling for racial and cultural collision is acute, …
Bill Nighy will, for some older viewers, elicit fond memories of Clifton Webb. Dry, sly, snarky Nighy plays a sheepish English assassin with a bossy mom (Eileen Atkins), a sexpot in peril (Emily Blunt), and a cute apprentice (Rupert Grint). Silly in plot, pushy in music, Jonathan Lynn’s crime comedy …
A new, sweetly effective Disney take on the A.A. Milne stories, though delightfully retro in its loyalty to the charming tales and their original drawings. Kids (ten and under) can have a fine time without having wow effects and action shoveled at them. John Cleese narrates like a nice British …
A Dutch teen (Martijn Lakemeier) risks his life and family to help a downed RAF pilot evade the Germans in 1945. In strong, wintry settings, it’s a dated cliché museum from director/writer Martin Koolhoven: predictable twists, surging music to coax feelings, a glaring Nazi brute, animal love and loss, young …
More ace work from tireless Paul Giamatti. He is a money-pressed lawyer who bends the rules to help himself and a codger (Burt Young). But the core story is his ripening bond with the guy’s grandson, whom Giamatti coaches on an upstart wrestling team. Simmering, young Alex Shaffer puts some …
French star Fabrice Luchini is like a pert mouse that substitutes charm for fur. His Jean-Louis is an aging, nice, dull, rich mama’s boy who breaks loose in the old house once mama dies. From the fiercely vital Spanish maids on the top floor, he gains a social conscience and …
A full tankard of gemütlich-kitsch about the ripening genius Goethe (handsome Alexander Fehling) who rouses his sleepy muse by falling hard for the provincial beauty Charlotte Buff (totally engaging and sexy Miriam Stein, who has a bold touch of Debra Winger). Philipp Stölzl’s beautifully outfitted and photographed movie is in …