Katniss Everdeen won her murder tournament in The Hunger Games. Now she has to deal with the aftermath. Once again, the best reason for seeing a Hunger Games movie is star Jennifer Lawrence, whose protean, Old Hollywood visage brings to mind the line about how They Had Faces Then. And …
Oh, so that’s what the Star Wars prequels were trying to do: trace the downward trajectory of a man from a good guy in a bad situation to a bad guy in a good situation — thanks in part to a healthy dose of heartbreaking loss. And director Francis Lawrence …
Directed by one-half of the co-directing team of The Big Night, Stanley Tucci, but not half as good a movie. The other half of that team, Campbell Scott, has an expanded role on screen as the monocled and facially scarred Teutonic martinet who runs a tight ship on a transatlantic …
A bag containing cholesterol-free, nutrient-dense seeds that have the power to change the world falls into the wrong hands. Fee-fi-ho-hum! All of the costumes, elaborate sets, lush cinematography (thank you, Newton Thomas Sigel!), and naturalistic use of depth don’t amount to a hill of beans in this giant time-slayer. Talk …
Stanley Tucci's third directing effort (his second solo), all starring himself, all period pieces, all dealing with one or another aspect of the Artistic Temperament, only this one based on fact. In it, Tucci plays the Southern-bred New Yorker staff writer Joe Mitchell, who profiles a true-blue bohemian with darker …
Instead of getting love as a child, she got angry. Years later, Lindy’s (Kete Beckinsale) shrink (Stanley Tucci) diagnoses her ailment as intermittent explosive disorder, a condition that causes her to fly off the handle at even the slightest disturbance. Dating was difficult to say the least — until a …
As per its punchy subhead, this is “based on two true stories,” parallel stories of feminist self-determination, set half a century apart, then and now. One focuses on Julie Powell, self-made blogger, daily chronicler of a year-long project to cook her way through volume one of Mastering the Art of …
Barbet Schroeder's remake and update of Henry Hathaway's same-named film of 1947 is a serviceable crime melodrama. It should come as no surprise, but perhaps as some continuing source of pain, that a mature European of culture and taste can be trusted to show more respect for the genre than …
Social consciousness for kids, an orgy of benevolence, generosity, trust, fellowship, and so on, among the needy in Depression-era Cincinnati, with a few not-very-nice party poopers thrown in as object lessons. The lachrymose Abigail Breslin, in the title role of a ten-year-old cub reporter, has plenty of opportunity to promote …
Fourteen-year-old rape and murder victim, marooned in “the in-between," a/k/a "the blue horizon" dividing life and afterlife, continues to watch over her family, friends, and unapprehended killer, a quintessential creep who looks to be guiltily, self-incriminatingly, in disguise: Stanley Tucci with a blond comb-over hairpiece, paste-on matching mustache, aviator glasses, …
We are dealing with a bona fide case of mistaken identity here. No, we are dealing with a bogus case of fakeout -- a crime story with an apparent innocent (Josh Hartnett) caught in the machinations of two rival gangs, African-American and Jewish, or "Darkies" and "Skullcaps" in copspeak, headed …
Can Jennifer Lopez be Pretty Womanized? The question does not ask whether she can be America's Sweetheart (which, owing to her career choices to date, and despite the cuteness of her giggle, her nose-scrunch, her accent, etc., seems very much out of the question), but rather whether she can have …
Not bad, if you want the 2008 financial collapse reduced to an adrenalized ego showdown in f-wordy debt to David Mamet. Kevin Spacey is the greed pig who squishes best. Jeremy Irons is the predator who heads the investment firm, seeming to welcome disaster with a shark’s appetite. Writer-director J.C. …
Shakespeare's supernatural sex romp re-set in Tuscany in the age of the bicycle and the Victrola, with all attendant discord and discomfort. (Why would Tuscans have names like Theseus, Hermia, Demetrius, and Lysander? Why, prithee, would they still be talking like that?) It doesn't help that the major roles are …
Howard Franklin's hommage to a Weegee-like tabloid photographer of the type celebrated in the old Warners' programmer, The Picture Snatcher. The writer-director's soft-minded appreciation spills over into Nazi-fighting heroics and a beauty-and-beast romantic angle. Everything considered, Joe Pesci is remarkably subdued, remarkably un-Runyonesque. And the period production turns up just …