An Australian geologist (Toni Collette) is obliged to squire a Japanese speculator (Gotaro Tsunashima) around the Outback: "I'm a bloody geologist, not a geisha!" The clash of cultures and languages produces unexciting results: e.g., a toneless rendition of "Danny Boy" at a karaoke bar. Events take an unexpected turn, however, …
The feature debut of music-video veterans Jonathan Dayton and his wife Valerie Faris was put together on the "quirky" assembly line, a product of the thriving "quirky" industry. Dad (Greg Kinnear) is a would-be self-help guru, "would-be," that is, if anyone were buying his Nine-Step Refuse-to-Lose System. Sample pearl, in …
A suburban mom unexpectedly inherits her grandfather's Mafia empire. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke, starring Toni Collette, Monica Bellucci, and Sophia Nomvete.
A suburban mom unexpectedly inherits her grandfather's Mafia empire. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke, starring Toni Collette, Monica Bellucci, and Sophia Nomvete.
The directorial debut of P.J. Hogan, previously encountered as a producer on his wife's directorial debut, Proof. (Jocelyn Moorhouse herewith returns the favor, functioning as a producer on her husband's debut. ) But at that time he was going by the name of Paul Hogan, making for an unfortunate confusion …
A jilted homosexual, the morose host of a national AIDS-awareness radio show, transfers his emotions, at long distance, onto a terminally ill pedophilia victim and his adoptive mother, but then, despite speaking to him repeatedly on the telephone, he comes to doubt the boy's existence. The intriguing premise (from an …
David Schwimmer makes the jump from the little screen's Friends, and backwards to the big screen's The Graduate: a Hoffman-esque figure drawn into a romantic triangle with an older woman and a same-aged woman; boyish and puppyish; helpless and needy; innocent and adorable. Or that's the hope, anyhow. The story …
Strictly speaking a sequel and not a remake, a perpetuation of the family name, or brand name, of the identically titled 1971 blaxploitation hit. The original John Shaft, now "Uncle" John Shaft (Richard Roundtree), puts in a couple of cameo appearances (along with his director, the leonine Gordon Parks) as …
Ghost story about a doleful little boy who sees dead people all around him and a wobbly child psychologist who tries to help him. It delivers three or four really good scares and a surprise ending that makes you want, or need, to sit through it a second time. The …
The directing debut of the screenwriter of American Beauty, Alan Ball, concerns itself, in a bland beige image, with the sexual experiences of an Arab-American eighth-grader in suburban Houston during the first Gulf War, and with little else. Sex and the Single-Minded Girl: pubic shaving, first period, girlie magazines, masturbation, …
Todd Haynes's self-indulgent and overreaching excavation of the "glam" scene of the early Seventies. It starts out in mid-19th Century with the arrival on earth of Oscar Wilde, deposited on a Dublin doorstep by flying saucer. After a forward leap of a hundred years, it settles down (somewhat) to a …
Summertime, and the living is horribly painful and awkward, because you're a pouty-slouchy teenager (Liam James) stuck riding in the titular seat of your mom's boyfriend's restored station wagon on the way to his rented beach house for a month of inarticulate misery. Your mom (Toni Collette)? She's lonely and …
There isn’t much point in reviewing a film that summarizes itself thusly: “Kick some ass, get the girl, and try to look dope while you’re doing it.” But a job’s a job: Xander Cage (Vin Diesel) is, according to this third entry in the XXX series, the guy you call …