Meddlers gonna meddle. A widow decides to get involved in her daughter's life. But then: JK Simmons shows up doing his best Sam Elliott. Could it be love? Susan Sarandon and Rose Byrne star. Lorene Scafaria writes and directs.
Arch and artificial memory film about a hippie family outside Taos in the Seventies, during the time of the father's great depression (the adult daughter-narrator, looking back: "It was inescapable, my father's depression, like some fumigator's mist filling our lungs"), and about the IRS auditor who comes calling, gets laid …
One of Santa's reindeer is grounded with a bum leg in Small Town, U.S.A. How are all those presents going to get delivered this year? A Christmas fantasy positioned on the Schmaltz Scale somewhere above the Hallmark Card outfit. With Rebecca Harrell, Sam Elliott, and Abe Vigoda; directed by John …
Patrick Swayze, showing no signs of embarrassment and hence none of intelligence either, is a sort of Wyatt Earp of the nightclub circuit, a professional bouncer (a.k.a. "cooler") called in to tame the toughest of hellholes, just as Wyatt was summoned to Dodge and Wichita. This idea has possibilities, even …
The entire N.Y.P.D. appears to be on the take, but any incipient paranoia gets worked off in sweaty, hard-breathing, thoroughly preposterous action scenes. Peter Weller and Sam Elliott, as a dogged Legal Aid attorney and the Last Honest Cop, are a couple of cuties who need a less indulgent director: …
Laboring black comedy centering around a post-coital corpse in a hotel room. Bill Pullman, as an unconfidant vertical-blind salesman, gets good results for his pains. And Carrie Fisher gets some too, without breaking a sweat. But they're not the stars of the show. Kirstie Alley is, and she huffs and …
Satire with teeth, discolored though they may be. There is nothing exceptional cinematically about the directing debut of Jason Reitman, son of the mainstream comedy director Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters, Twins, Kindergarten Cop, and the like), but from the opening credits -- the witty cigarette-pack graphic motif, Tex Williams's C&W; oldie, …
The post-Private Ryan fashion in war films now reaches the treacherous terrain of the Vietnam War. Call it the all-guts-all-glory look: the stomach-turning level of mayhem commonly associated with the anti-war film, and yet a crispness of salute more typical of the wartime flag-waver. Writer-director Randall Wallace, who wrote but …