As an explanation of romantic incompatibility, the catchphrase title is stunningly unilluminating, no matter which of its six words is stressed. (On screen, the third one stands out in green from the white of the rest, but that seems an arbitrary reading.) Satisfied with the what and incurious about the …
Instead of following author Stephen Rebello’s fine Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho by turning out a procedural on the art of making a masterpiece, Sacha Gervasi (Anvil: The Story of Anvil) gives us a watered-down romcom directed in the style of an episode of Hitchcock Presents. (It’s ostensibly …
Robert Redford's almost three-hour rendering of the Nicholas Evans best-seller, a gussied-up grade-A version of the staple triumph-over-adversity made-for-TV movie, with Nature Company greeting-card photography and a high-class cast (Kristin Scott Thomas, Sam Neill, Dianne Wiest, Chris Cooper, in addition to Redford). The adversity arrives in a hurry: a more …
A new spin on the old boss's-daughter romance. And not just new, but contemporary, up-to-date, timely, topical. The romancer is now the boss himself -- a fast-track junior executive fresh out of business school and still wet behind the ears -- and the daughter's father is now the romancer's underling, …
It serves a sequel’s purpose; it gives the sheep somewhere to go and get clipped. No one can reasonably complain about Don Cheadle taking over the supporting part of Col. "Rhodey" Rhodes from Terrence Howard (otherwise same principal cast and director, Jon Favreau), and Scarlett Johansson ingratiatingly prostitutes herself to …
The beginning takes place in the vicinity of an Orwellian dystopia, where a closely monitored populace ("Sodium Excess Detected," reads out a urinal at a morning pee) must live in regimented drudgery and sterile isolation, under stricter rules against intergender "proximity" than at a Catholic-school dance, and with the desperate …
Sofia Coppola's sophomore effort marks an advance over The Virgin Suicides: a phlegmatic comedy about two American outsiders who fall into an ill-defined relationship in Tokyo, a bond forged of loneliness and misery between an over-the-hill Hollywood action star (a sadsack Bill Murray, who surely should have been written as …
Amanda and Laurel. Runaway sisters from separate foster homes. The teenage one has gotten herself pregnant, and compounds the problem with the dim idea of kidnapping the knowledgeable and opinionated clerk from Connie's Baby Connection. The clerk turns out to have problems of her own. "Are you saying she's some …
The first Coen brothers film to disappoint. That's not to say it's not good, certainly not to say it's not even as good as their first, Blood Simple, when there could be no expectations and so no disappointment. The brothers have not suddenly lost their touch. They do for Billy …
Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) is the type who will reflexively engage in conversation with the petitioner outside the Ralph’s supermarket, a nurturing soul who abandoned a potentially successful career in Hollywood to move East and work with her husband Charlie’s (Adam Driver) fledgling theatre company. Her star waned, he became the …
Didactic illustration, by Woody Allen, of the role of luck in human affairs, taking as its central metaphor a ball clipping the top of the net in a game of tennis, freeze-framed indecisively in midair. The story traces the progress of a lowborn Irish tennis pro (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), not quite …
Modest, clever, diverting comedy about a directionless college grad (Scarlett Johansson), with a major in Business and minor in Anthropology, who falls into a temp position as an Upper East Side nanny, continuing her anthropological studies independently in the exotic society of the filthy rich. The self-absorbed parents (Laura Linney, …
Another installment in the long-running royal soap opera. Think of it as Elizabeth: The Genesis, an hysterical-historical story of court intrigue, concentrating heavily, and heavy-breathingly, on bedroom intrigue, the sibling rivalry over the affections of Henry VIII. The “other” Boleyn girl, as she is self-described in the dialogue, turns out …
Pandering teen caper film in which a motley crew of high-school seniors (pothead, jock, poor little rich girl, etc.) conspire for motley reasons to steal the answers to the SAT. ("Suck-Ass Test -- that's what that stands for," elucidates the annoyingly loud narrator.) A dab of nostalgia: Mike Jarvis, the …