A not despicable reprise of the same material, juvenile yet jaded, profoundly lazy and lackadaisical, sufficiently disdainful, even, to aim an occasional joke over the heads of the rubes (something about "my Laura Antonelli tapes"). It is least despicable when least jaded and lazy: Rick Moranis's ineptness as a courtroom …
A modern dress mutation of High Noon with a pro-life message substituting for the “real time” western’s obvious allegory against blacklisting. Instead of a cowardly Marshal soliciting the aid of local townsfolk (including his girlfriend!), storming granny Lily Tomlin races against the clock, going hat-in-hand to various guest stars (including …
A going-through-the-motions Pittsburgh weatherman (Bill Murray, letting plenty of antipopulist snarl and sneer show through), covering the annual Groundhog Festival for the fourth consecutive year in rustic Punxsutawney, Pa., is obliged by an unforecast blizzard to spend another night in the same damn bed-and-breakfast. He wakes up the next day …
A going-through-the-motions Pittsburgh weatherman (Bill Murray, letting plenty of antipopulist snarl and sneer show through), covering the annual Groundhog Festival for the fourth consecutive year in rustic Punxsutawney, Pa., is obliged by an unforecast blizzard to spend another night in the same damn bed-and-breakfast. He wakes up the next day …
After a reign of three brief years, Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet is overthrown as the worst Hamlet in screen history. It was no problem to modernize the setting by moving the action to the Hotel Elsinore, New York headquarters of the multinational Denmark Corporation; but we are still stuck, even in …
Bill Murray goes fishing for Oscar in shallow water. In the Spring of 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt (Murray) was the first-ever president to host British royalty on American soil. The weekend shindig was thrown at the title locale, F.D.R.’s home in upstate New York. Chin jutting, cigarette holder pointing northward, …
If Chevy Chase, if John Belushi, if Dan Aykroyd, if Gilda Radner, if Bill Murray, if Jane Curtin, if Laraine Newman, then why not Mark Blankfield? But then again, why? Why bring him, and the Fridays brand of drug humor, from the little screen to the big? Jerry Belson's Jekyll-and-Hyde …
Bill Murray attempts to fill the shoes (paws?) of the incomparable Phil Harris as Balou the Bear in Disney’s live-action remake of its animated version of Rudyard Kipling’s book about animal politics. Jon Favreau directs.
No-holds-barred lowbrow comedy, with unusual levels of nerve and endurance, especially on the fun-poking possibilities of a prosthetic appendage and bald-spot comb-overs. It goes soft at the end, although later than you might expect. And the bowling ambience, in which a one-handed has-been is preparing an Amish bumpkin for a …
Sluggish elephant comedy (what would you expect?), with a couple of pleasantly giddy stretches: first, when Bill Murray tries to wing it behind the wheel of a big rig; second, when he asks for a change of clothes in a New Mexico pueblo and receives John Wayne's She Wore a …
With, more factually, Bill Murray in the role of Zissou, an over-the-hill, or over-the-wave, oceanographer cum filmmaker, a cut-rate Cousteau: "What happened to me? Did I lose my talent? Am I ever going to be any good again?" Director Wes Anderson, a critical darling and "indie" bellwether for Bottle Rocket, …
In form a thriller, this feels more like an endurance test: so far-fetched, so encoded, so self-indulgent, it’s not apt to stir much curiosity or hope of satisfaction. Yet even though the course of action — from Madrid to Seville to the Spanish hinterland, in the company of a stone-faced, …
It originated in a 1960 Roger Corman shoestringer primarily remembered for a brief appearance by the very young Jack Nicholson as a pain-loving dental patient, and only secondarily for the blood-drinking plant with a small but useful vocabulary ("Feed me!"). Since then it was reincarnated circa 1982 as a stage …
It originated in a 1960 Roger Corman shoestringer primarily remembered for a brief appearance by the very young Jack Nicholson as a pain-loving dental patient, and only secondarily for the blood-drinking plant with a small but useful vocabulary ("Feed me!"). Since then it was reincarnated circa 1982 as a stage …
A documentary that explores the relationship between golfer and caddy. Bill Murray narrates and Jason Baffa directs.