Score one for mass culture: the animating forces behind The Simpsons aren't about to teach you anything new about the possibilities inherent in illustrated storytelling, but "Maggie Simpson in 'The Longest Daycare'" dominates this year's field through old-school craft and wit, and offers a politically topical Ayn Rand hook to …
While brevity demands that a short film keep its focus tight and on-point, it has the opposite effect on a documentary. In a short doc, it is enough for the viewer to be presented with a detailed, engaging slice of life, with no point required save the sharing of lived …
By turns exhilarating and devastating, the 2013 live-action short-film lineup serves as a reminder of why movies matter, what they can do, and why they needn't be larded up into three-hour epics that hit all the expected beats. Every entry confronts the blunt fact of death; every entry provides a …
Director Scott Cooper's long-awaited followup to Crazy Heart may make you wish the wait had been a little longer. He got his all-star cast, but forgot to come up with a logical screenplay (he shares writing credit with Brad Ingelsby). And apparently, he also got his camera stuck on Close …
Insert sinking balloon joke here. James Franco mugs his way through director Sam Raimi’s candy-colored CGI wonderland as a carnival magician who finds himself called upon to rally the oppressed people of Oz to believe in him. Or at least, to believe in the power of their dreams? Anyway, belief …
Director Guillermo Del Toro goes for the gold, offering up a robots-punch-monsters movie tailor-made for the international market: modeled after Japanese anime, set largely in Hong Kong, featuring Chinese, Russian, and Australian heroes operating giant robots named with a German word, and offering a Brit (Idris Elba) as its emotional …
Oy, Bay! Michael Bay, the Butcher of Burbank, returns, this time with one pound of script in a 20 lb. casing and a refrigerated display case fit to bust with shoulder cut of Mark Wahlberg, prime rib of Anthony Mackie, and filet of Rock. In order to help underwrite their …
Another Coppola, another troubled teen flick that begs audiences to ponder the lives of rich bored white rebels without a clue. Grandpa Francis and aunt Sofia had the good sense to rely on established best sellers for their first forays into the youth film market. Not so, Francis’ granddaughter Gia …
Pro-nuke propaganda it may be, but at least it's straightforward about it. (As opposed to, say, pro-solar propaganda from an oil industry that knows solar poses no real threat to market share.) Plus, it's smart about its presentation, employing as it does a slew of environmentalists who have converted — …
Anna Maria is a middle-aged Austrian seeking to convert her country back to Catholicism through prayer, penance, and evangelization. Her efforts are complicated when her long-absent husband — Egyptian, Muslim, and wheelchair-bound — returns to live with her. Second part of Ulrich Seidl's Faith, Hope, Love trilogy. Religion is scary …
Ah, young love. At an Austrian fat camp where you're sent while your mom is off in Kenya. With the camp doctor. Who is 40 years older than you are. And this is the happy conclusion to Ulrich Seidl's Faith, Hope, Love trilogy.
While her sister sets out to convert their homeland (Paradise: Faith), a heavyset Austrian gal takes a midlife trip to Kenya. Looking for love, you see. Part one of Ulrich Seidl's unsparing Faith, Hope, Love trilogy.
A little cheese on the corporate ladder (Liam Hemsworth), desperate to raise money to pay for his dad’s life-saving operation, accepts the boss’s offer to spy on the competition in this moldy melodrama given a techno facelift. What good is a thriller if the audience is always two-steps ahead of …
Director Taylor Hackford gives author Donald Westlake's famous thief another crack at the big screen. The effort probably won't make anyone forget Lee Marvin in Point Blank, but it just might eclipse Mel Gibson's Payback. Parker is a man of principle; if he weren't played by Jason Statham in perpetual …