A five-genre pileup: buddy-cop flick, supernatural thriller, Western, dystopian-future sci-fi, and straight-up monster horror. Sorting through the wreckage is more trouble than it’s worth. The Western stuff works better than the rest (despite the multiple Clint Eastwood impersonations); the tension within the thrown-together partnership of lawman and warrior-priest provides the …
One more intelligent, well-made film from France’s Bertrand Tavernier, yet with little creative excitement. The religious wars of the 16th Century background a tale of romantic obsession, high-born intrigue, forced marriage, a golden beauty (Mélanie Thierry), and a minor aristocrat (Lambert Wilson) sick of war. The castles, horses, costumes, and …
Whoa. The latest documentary from Man on Wire director James Marsh, Project Nim tells the story of Columbia University psychology professor Herbert Terrace’s attempt to have a chimpanzee raised like a human and taught language in the process — and of Nim’s Odyssean life after the experiment shuts down. The …
Chad Freidrichs's award-winning documentary about the infamous St. Louis housing project.
Set in sunny Corsica, it stars Sandrine Bonnaire as a bored hotel maid saved by discovering chess. Kevin Kline is the suave American widower who teaches her the art of the game (his French is fine, his English better as he recites Blake’s poem “The Tyger”). Chess becomes the analog …
A shaggy dog story about a nearly hairless cat in 1920s Algiers. He serves his master the rabbi, but he loves his mistress, the rabbi’s fleshy daughter. When he eats the family parrot and so gains the power of speech, he seizes the opportunity to begin pitching woo. The rabbi …
The first computer-animated feature from Industrial Light & Magic, centered around a chameleon who finds his identity as a “spaghetti Western” sheriff. Said to be hip about the genre roots. With the voices of Johnny Depp, Alfred Molina, Abigail Breslin, Bill Nighy, Harry Dean Stanton, Ned Beatty.
A promoter and his estranged son bond through robot boxing matches. Motion capture reaches new levels of sophistication, but when it comes to narrative refinement, Real Steel remains a product of cinema’s dark ages. The initial effects are enough to hold your attention, but all bets are off when the …
Like a Pieter Bruegel picture reduced to a “cool” medieval fair in rural Wisconsin. Peasants, haunted by sex and Satan, do a weird sort of ancestral disco dance à la Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London.” Amanda Seyfried, looking made of cheese from the moon, casts the lunar spell of her …
Sulking Henry Hopper and diseased Mia Wasikowska meet at a stranger’s funeral and fall in love. I can hear the trailer announcer now: “Bayside faces losing one of its own as Slater helps Kelly battle a terminal illness. Gus Van Sant directs this special episode of *Saved by the Bell*." …
There is not much new to be learned in this update on the possible global resurgence of electric cars. What once was a genuinely moving look at the destruction of a fleet of revolutionary zero-emission vehicles is now an infomercial. Oil companies killed the electric car, but you have General …
Anne Hathaway joins Will.i.am, Jamie Foxx, and Tracy Morgan in an animated film about Brazilians and their birds. The result is a little bland and a little hip-hop. (George Lopez provides a soupçon of Latino flavor as a toucan with 17 kids.) Jesse Eisenberg, however, makes perfect sense as a …
Inspirational sports documentary about an undrafted college football player who beats the odds to become an internationally famous soccer star. Written and directed by San Diego filmmakers Nick Lewis and Ranko Tutulugdzija.