A beautifully rooted film with a spiritual grip. Charlotte Gainsbourg is the French-born wife of an Aussie man who suddenly dies, leaving her with several kids in a ramshackle house near a grand Moreton Bay fig tree. She and the daughter (played as a bright dreamer by very fine Morgana …
In only his fifth film in 38 years, eye-of-God director Terrence Malick wraps the pains of a family in ’50s Texas (partly based on his youth) in a bloated burrito of suffocating pomposity. The “wow” nature visuals, cosmic perspective, and solemn, whispery spirituality destroy any chance for real, poetic profundity. …
A violent drizzle of dung. Nicolas Cage is the diamond seller whose lavish home, wall safe, elegant wife (Nicole Kidman), and sex-bait daughter tempt stupid creeps to terrorize them. The villains are preening but instantly forgettable, exposing their crude backstories and motives while director Joel Schumacher revels in every ridiculous …
Steve Coogan and chum Rob Brydon, sort of playing themselves, drive around North England, sample gourmet restaurants, comically recite poetry, needle one another, and offer competing impressions (Coogan’s Michael Caine is slightly better, but Brydon is ace with Anthony Hopkins). Coogan is rather draggy, fretting about his career and serially …
A young man loses his virginity to the woman of his dreams, only to turn around and deflower her younger sister...before finally being shown a good time by their divorced mother. The only thing separating writer-director Jeff Lipsky’s low-budget, tripod-free, string-of-dialogue scenes from mumblecore is a non-improvised, overly elaborate script. …
Finally, a movie about a vampire-human love affair that isn’t afraid to tackle the tough question of what happens when the resulting vampire-human hybrid fetus begins to threaten the life and health of the human (read: fragile) mother. No “happily ever after” here, folks — this is a story about …
Uncle Boonmee is dying. His relatives show up to take care of him. So do his dead wife and transmogrified son. If no one acts particularly surprised, it’s because they all share a sense of continuity — between life and death and life after death, between the human and animal …
San Diego-based moviefolk Kevin Tostado (director/producer), Craig Bentley (producer), and Jordan Guzzardo (director of photography) team up to do for Monopoly what Wordplay did for crossword puzzles. The 2009 Monopoly World Championship in Las Vegas provides the dramatic engine, but there are plenty of diverting asides along the way, from …
A married fisherman (Cristian Mercado) is the rising alpha male of his Peruvian, very Catholic village. His secretive gay love for a visiting artist puts all at risk. Honest acting and strong seaside atmosphere sustain Javier Fuentes-León’s film, though a ghostly dream element is sutured in with a certain strain. …
What’s unknown is why they bothered. Liam Neeson goes to Berlin, is smashed into a coma, emerges from it. The movie doesn’t. He hustles through a hectic plot that seems like a close-out sale on thrillers. Flushed away are Aidan Quinn, Frank Langella, Diane Kruger, and Sebastian Koch, though Bruno …
Four souls gather in Sonny’s bar and try to hold off the encroaching dark. And, boy, does it encroach, with victims disappearing in an instant, leaving only their clothes behind. Director Brad Anderson manages to produce a spooky mood but not much more, and there are enough non sequiturs to …
Separated at the outset and assigned new BFFs, America’s favorite toking twosome spend the holidays reconciling. The 3-D pot smoke is sublime, but the stereoscopic effects frequently grind what little momentum there is to a halt. It’s not as funny as the first nor as politically responsible as the second, …
A young man grieving over the loss of his mother (and suffering from plot-convenient Tourette’s syndrome), a feisty anorexic gal, and a Bach-obsessed nerd with OCD check out of rehab for a spot of R and R. Stop me if you’ve heard this one. Instead of establishing a deep bond …
No, not the Hilton sisters, America’s once loved and sadly forgotten Siamese twins. Instead, Geoffrey Fletcher’s violent and ditzy Violet & Daisy gives us a pair of blue-eyed teenage hit-girls (32-year-old Alexis Bledel and Saoirse Ronan, basically reprising her role as Hanna) who are assigned the job of whacking Michael …
Septic sludge, or in ’60s film lingo, Mondo Crappo. This crime melodrama is the first feature created indigenously in the former Belgian Congo, so why does “visionary” auteur Djo Munga make Kinshasa look like a blocked toilet? This spew of blaxploitation clichés with a Third World spin offers violence, torture, …