Come for the movie, stay for the message. It’s 1963, and an ambitious prosecutor — and one of the few good Germans in Naziland — thinks it time to finally alert a nation of orders-following, Holocaust-denying Huns to the existence of Auschwitz. Alexander Fehling (imagine a young John Wayne with …
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, …
Let’s not forget Jenny. Marley is the rambunctious Labrador — “the world’s worst dog” — meant to tide Jenny over till she and Me (real-life newspaper columnist John Grogan) can make some babies. As it turns out, we follow the dog through the arrival of three children and a move …
Music’s golden couple (Jennifer Lopez and Maluma) are set to make it legal before a viewing audience of 20 million when tragedy strikes in the form of viral video evidence of the groom getting it on with the bride’s assistant. In the spirit of that nineteenth century theatrical axiom, the …
If they’d spent half as much time on the jokes, relationships, characters, and yes, even plot as they did on the late ‘90s wardrobe, goofy hairstyling, and tacky makeup…it might have been a fun film about bumbling white trash looking to better its lot via $17 million armored-car heist. (Has …
Twenty-five, thirty years earlier, a cast of Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, and Barbra Streisand would have tilted the earth's axis. Nowadays they -- or at any rate Hoffman and Streisand, pickups for the sequel to Meet the Parents, as the hippie-dippy, touchie-feelie, loosey-goosey parents of the groom-to-be -- are …
A bad-to-worse weekend for a male nurse named Focker (you'll need several sets of fingers and toes to count up the utterances of that name), who accompanies his prospective fiancée to his prospective sister-in-law's wedding. The women, including the prospective mother-in-law, virtually fade into the woodwork, as all attention centers …
One of Woody Allen’s mostly smoothly enjoyable entertainments. Like Stanley Donen’s Funny Face and Richard Linklater’s Before Sunset, it is a devotional candle of the American love of La Belle Paris. The blond wick who lights up for joy is Owen Wilson as Gil, a “Hollywood hack,” aspiring novelist, and …
Sardonic study of a mild-mannered nonviolent serial killer (poisoned Amaretto is his weapon of choice), an ingratiating drifter who leaves a place a little less populous than he found it. Believable behavior from Janeane Garofalo, Mercedes Ruehl, and Brian Cox, but Owen Wilson in the lead role is more a …
Jumanji-esque jumble of special effects, in which all the exhibits at the Natural History Museum in New York City come to life after dark. This allows for a lot of, frankly an excess of, variety: Lilliputian cowboys and Roman soldiers who tie down the new night watchman like Gulliver; a …
For the requisite sequel, the locale shifts from N.Y. to D.C., which opens the door to some new characters and creatures (e.g., Albert Einstein bobblehead dolls, which, when brought to life, inconceivably contain Einstein’s actual brain), along with some old ones packed up at the Natural History Museum for storage …
Fresh in from Texas, Superdad Owen Wilson and the family arrive “somewhere in Asia” just in time to celebrate Kill All Americans Day. Fine sleight of hand work on the pre-credit sequence promptly sails headlong into a Xenophobic, effects-laden thrill ride, minus the superhero costumes. Pierce Brosnan, in a brief …
Owen Wilson stars as Carl Nargle, a Vermont public TV painter who is convinced he has it all: a signature perm, custom van, and fans hanging on his every stroke. But then a younger, better artist threatens to steal everything (and everyone) Carl loves. Directed by Brit McAdams, starring Owen …