Adequate biographical data (narrated by Ron Howard), generous film clips (of uneven print quality), and perhaps overgenerous eulogies (from the likes of Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, John Milius, and Robert Altman), in celebration of the centennial of Capra's birth. Written and directed by Kenneth Bowser.
Playwright Peter Morgan restages the 1977 “no holds barred” TV interview of Richard Nixon by British talk-show host David Frost, and the drum-beating buildup to it. A prizefight metaphor runs throughout, permitting director Ron Howard to slip comfortably into the underdog mode of his Cinderella Man, with Frost, as it …
In the previous movie by this name, the American attitude toward the Japanese (with Randolph Scott showing the way) favored annihilation. This one, forty-odd years later, about a Japanese takeover of an American auto plant, inclines toward compromise. Which is not to say that the face-off between Japanese regimentalism and …
Growing up Opie, the closest Ron Howard came to an addictive personality was town drunk Otis Campbell. Considering the amount of time Howard spent in Mayberry — and with almost three-dozen benignant features to his credit — one would be wrong to expect more spit and less polish in this …
A major ouch. The kiddie-lit holiday homily — "Maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store./ Maybe Christmas perhaps means a little bit more" — illustrated in theme-park sets and costumes (rodenty snouts on all the citizens of Whoville save the little heroine, Taylor Momsen, and Christine Baranski). Jim Carrey, as …
A thoroughly pedestrian adventure that might have been better titled Hell is Lots and Lots of Other People.. At least, that's the belief of the billionaire bad guy in Ron Howard's latest adaptation of Dan Brown's series featuring symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks). What to do about overbreeding humanity? Well, …
First, the good news: director Ron Howard does right by the whale in this story of the true story behind the greatest fish story of them all, Moby Dick. In contrast to nearly everything else — characters, action, themes — the massive marine mammal is presented clearly, potently, and without …
In 1885 New Mexico, a frontier medicine woman forms an uneasy alliance with her estranged father when her daughter is kidnapped by an Apache brujo. Directed by Ron Howard, starring Tommy Lee Jones, Cate Blanchett, Aaron Eckhart, Val Kilmer, and Evan Rachel Wood.
Women's Western, concerned with a frontier healer (Cate Blanchett) and her relationship issues, her maternal instincts, her sexual urges. One day her estranged and very strange father (Tommy Lee Jones, as "Mr. Jones") turns up on her New Mexico homestead, having long ago gone native and converted himself into a …
Most of the important members of the American Graffiti gang, excluding Richard Dreyfuss, are reassembled and then separated into independent and alternating storylines, each set on New Year's Eve in consecutive years from 1964 to 1967, and each equipped with a custom-sized image, Paul Le Mat drag-racing in wide, wide …
Hard-working but not very creative comedy about a prostitution ring operating out of the City Morgue. Ron Howard's direction, in only his second feature, starts out with a surge of unchanneled energy, but soon levels off, and later on summons up only an occasional flutter. Similarly, newcomer Michael Keaton lets …
Director Ron Howard continues to toss and turn and sweat profusely in the grips of bestselleritis: one of those multi-character Arthur Hailey-type things, set this time in the exciting world of newspaper publishing (the fictitious New York Sun: "It Shines for All"), where every day brings a new deadline, a …
Four generations and four households result in too diffuse a scope (and too disparate an acting ensemble: from the cartoonishness of Steve Martin and Rick Moranis to the fussy pointillism of Dianne Wiest). The filmmakers clearly wanted to cover all possibilities, and some of the possibilities have a deep bedrock …
The nicest guy in Hollywood, Ron Howard, shares a simple, unfettered gander into the life of Luciano Pavarotti. A celebrity biopic by any other name. Howard attempts to put a redemptive spin on the family’s ultimate acceptance of their philandering tenor. After all, where there’s a will, there’s an inheritance. …
Ron Howard pays documentary tribute to Luciano Pavarotti.