Very large performance in a very long movie, Tilda Swinton as a foul-mouthed slatternly alcoholic in a harebrained kidnap scheme. Only when the kidnapped child gets twice kidnapped (the Coens could have wrung some laughs from this) does the suspense begin to build. Too little, too late. With Aidan Gould, …
In form a thriller, this feels more like an endurance test: so far-fetched, so encoded, so self-indulgent, it’s not apt to stir much curiosity or hope of satisfaction. Yet even though the course of action — from Madrid to Seville to the Spanish hinterland, in the company of a stone-faced, …
A seven-year slice -- more like a mince -- of the life of British painter Francis Bacon and his S&M relationship with his model, George Dyer. John Maybury's attempt to recapture in live action the "atmosphere" of a Bacon painting, without actually showing any, relies on the cold mechanics of …
The title figure is the designated fixer for the elite Manhattan law firm of Kenner, Bach & Ledeen, touted as a “miracle worker” but more modest in his self-assessment: “I’m not a miracle worker, I’m a janitor. The smaller the mess, the easier it is for me to clean it …
High-tension CEO Tilda Swinton announces, during the bonkers opening scene set in her dead father’s infamous subterranean factory, the “discovery” of miracle superpigs and a decade-long contest to raise the most super pig of all. (Yes, their faces look more canine than porcine, but who wants to look a gift …
Less a movie than an extended, deadpan, highly stylized rant from director Jim Jarmusch. Adam (Tom Hiddleston) is a vampire. Adam listens to vinyl, collects vintage electric guitars, and makes awesome music that he doesn’t want to be recognized as his. Adam hides out on the ruined outskirts of Detroit …
Sally Potter's "ruthless distillation" (her own words) of Virginia Woolf's imaginary biography slash historical novel slash literary criticism slash mash note on the poetic spirit in the Sackville family. (You'd never guess from the movie that it had anything to do with that.) At first it seems most concerned with …
Alejandro is an aspiring toy designer who's struggling to bring his unusual ideas to life in New York City. As time on his work visa runs out, a job assisting an art world outcast becomes his only hope to stay in the country and realise his dream. Written and directed …
Fueled by implausibility, and for a good portion of the ride much better for it, Bong-Joon Ho’s (The Host) Snowpiercer posits a non-stop, earth-encircling train containing the microcosmic survivors of a society killed off by a global warming-induced deep freeze. Much of the ingenuity is housed in the bullet-train-paced first …
The kind of big-theme fiction film that might expect to receive some brownie points in advance. Certainly Norman Jewison is that kind of filmmaker: In the Heat of the Night, F.I.S.T., And Justice for All, A Soldier's Story, Agnes of God, etc., etc. But the original novel by Brian Moore, …
If you could make one dream come true, what would you wish for? An R rated romantic fantasy from George Miller (Mad Max[es], The Witches of Eastwick, Babe: Pig in the City) starring Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba.
A new metaphor (preferable to Bedwetter no doubt) for the plight of the misfit, a coming-of-age tale, even a coming-to-confidence tale, concerning a feminine teenage boy (Lou Pucci, a blend of Johnny Depp and Scarlett Johansson) who hasn't yet weaned himself off his thumb. The first feature film of Mike …
The directorial debut of Tim Roth (thoroughly concealed behind the camera), a somber drama of sexual abuse in an isolated, stark, whitewashed country house on the Devonshire coast. It would be easy to tally up some anti-Hollywood points: the bad complexion on the introverted younger brother who wants to put …