In his directorial debut, Andy Garcia conjures the city of his birth, the city of his infancy, Havana in transition between Batista and Castro. A labor of love, presumably, but laborious positively, a limp epic of flat, underlit visuals and sententious, pretentious dialogue. "Havana is no longer a capital city, …
Sofia Coppola's sophomore effort marks an advance over The Virgin Suicides: a phlegmatic comedy about two American outsiders who fall into an ill-defined relationship in Tokyo, a bond forged of loneliness and misery between an over-the-hill Hollywood action star (a sadsack Bill Murray, who surely should have been written as …
Low-pressure comedy about the human urge to be somewhere or someone else. The contrived and self-conscious eccentricity of the set-up somewhat removes the theme from its rightful universality. Wayne, sarcastically nicknamed "Mad Dog" for his nonviolent tendencies, is a crime-scene photographer who would really rather be an art-gallery photographer. And …
That would be a Des Moines video-store clerk who drops in unannounced on his London-dwelling brother on his own birthday. The brother, more to get rid of him during an important business dinner than to give him a proper birthday present, signs him up for a participatory role-playing game called …
The team of director Ian Samuels and writer Lev Grossman (adapting his short story for the screen) score points early on for referencing by name Groundhog Day, Harold Ramis’ revered romantic comedy that finds Bill Murray forced to relive the same day. Such is Mark’s (Kyle Allen) fate: a life …
In the latter days of World War II, a band of charming, aging misfits (Bill Murray! George Clooney! Bob Balaban! John Goodman! Matt Damon! Plus that French guy and that English dude!) is tasked with designating, preserving, and ultimately, recovering the art looted by the Nazis during their European conquest …
Bookended by Benjamin Britten’s stirring “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra,” this is the most subtle, supple, deftly stylized fantasy from Wes Anderson. It happens on an island where scouting sets the tone of life. Brainy, dreamy kids (Jared Gilman, Kara Hayward) flee camp and home to share a wee …
Comedy out of the better-slob-than-snob school. But then, it hasn't much to be snobbish about. Its main boasting point is in finally giving Rodney Dangerfield a film role large enough to move around in: a nouveau-riche vulgarian who invades the inner sanctum of an exclusive country club. Bill Murray has …
The poster art for On the Rocks bears more than a passing resemblance to a moment from Sofia Coppola and Bill Murray’s hit from yesteryear, Lost in Translation. Surely they weren’t trying for a repeat May/December romance this time between Murray and Rashida Jones? Initial relief (the two play father …
A cartooned white blood cell (voice of Chris Rock) tracks down a lethal virus (voice of Laurence Fishburne) inside the body of a live-action Bill Murray: a loud, crude, ugly hybrid. Not to mention a less imaginative and less educational crib of Fantastic Voyage. Because the live-action parts are handled …
For her first feature, Kirsten Tan enters the mainstream with this saga of Thana, a disentranced, unhappily married man who, convinced that the elephant he spotted while wandering the streets of Bangkok is the same one from his childhood, purchases the pachyderm and proceeds to walk it some 300 miles …
I-Hate-New-York heist comedy: a smooth bank job followed by a bumpy escape route, which summarizes the reasons for wanting to leave the city at the same time as it throws up obstacles preventing it -- the raucous construction workers, the non-English-speaking cabbie, the punctilious bus driver (a movie-stealing portrayal by …
Uncommunicative version of the Somerset Maugham novel, done in big, pallid, flabby images that have the general consistency of bread dough. Bill Murray's suppressed smirk, upward-floating irises, and nerdlike sloping shoulders amount to a highly coy substitute for Maugham's post-WWI seeker of enlightenment. Indeed, so determined is Murray to avoid …
Catchy title sequence, made up of a series of technical illustrations tracing the history of weaponry from the Stone Age to the Atomic one, and backed by Ella Fitzgerald doing "You Took Advantage of Me." This and the CIA war-room sequence after it give the movie a genuine satirical edge, …