The name Mary Heurtin is as recognizable in France as Helen Keller’s is in America. (Heurtin was born in 1885, blind and deaf, five years after Keller.) Two-thirds of Marie’s Story is fundamentally a subtitled reiteration of similar material covered in the stage and movie hit The Miracle Worker, only …
Slowly but steadily, a pair of case-hardened homicide detectives (Raúl Arévalo and Javier Gutiérrez) discover they have more in common with each other (and the serial killer they tenaciously pursue) than initially thought in this anything-but-routine cop picture. Using Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood as a touchstone, Spanish director and …
Kids: stay in school, especially if you plan on becoming an astronaut. When a freak accident (wind-loosed antenna piercing bio-monitor) leads to his being stranded on the red planet, astro-botanist Matt Damon decides he ain't got time to muse on fate, the fragility of existence, or man's place in the …
One immediately senses something amiss when a violent, homophobic cop (Matthew Lillard) is called upon to chaperone his wife’s (Carla Gugino) dissertation interview with an eccentric, 70-year-old Juilliard dance instructor (Patrick Stewart). The cunning, double-dealing dialog held promise for a good thirty minutes into the show. Working from his play …
It's hard to criticize a film like Max, which tells the story of a military dog (!) who develops Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after his Marine master is killed in ugly circumstances (spoiler!), and is eventually entrusted to the Marine's sulky younger brother. (You might sulk too if your big …
Part two of Wes Ball's (The Maze Runner) adaptation of the hit YA trilogy runs and runs and ultimately stumbles on its way to part three. But first, there’s lots of running, both from evil authority figures who want to harvest our heroes to help fight against the zombie plague, …
The Kevin Costnerrection (that's not quite as catchy as McCaughnasance, is it?) continues its post-Hatfields run with this based-on-a-true-and-inspirational story about a knockabout coach who transforms Hoosiers into a track movie.
Terminally adorable teen cancer comedy destined to be best remembered for what it doesn’t do: shoot straight. One need not scratch much beneath the smattery parental units to expose a soulless core. The dying girl’s horny, alcoholic mom (played to one-note sitcom perfection by Molly Shannon) spends more time flirting …
Korean revenge pic from Heung-Sik Park (Children of Heaven), starring Byung-hun Lee (I Saw the Devil), Go-eun Kim, and Do-yeon Jeon.
Long on atmospherics, short on narrative, Zachary Treitz's grainy history lesson is at once anti-war, anti-story, anti-character, and pro-mumblecore. Overgrown Francis (David Maloney) schemes on a future as a tobacco farmer while seemingly responsible older brother Henry (a stone-faced Tim Morton) ups and enlists. When a clumsy stab at front …
Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s solid sports documentary takes its name from India’s Mount Meru, which features a fin-shaped granite peak that has thwarted many of the world’s best climbers, including the three-man team of famed veteran Conrad Anker, his protégé Jimmy Chin, and relative newcomer Renan Ozturk. But …
Documentary from Su Rynard about songbirds in peril.
Opera goes avant-garde (meaning, among other things, a twelve-tone scale).
Black rams, white ewes, green-eyed monsters.
Verdi's big hit about forbidden love in ancient Egypt.