Trifling crime comedy slash road movie which for some reason, out of the truckloads of scripts dumped at their individual doorsteps, captured the fancy of both Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt. (Typical Roberts line, spoken to her abductor: "You know, you're a very sensitive person for a cold-blooded killer." Typical …
A rare sports movie with a brain. Brad Pitt does perhaps his best star acting as Billy Beane, the Oakland Athletics general manager who, sick of being looted of talent by big-money teams like the Yankees, opted for a “sabermetrics” approach using computers ands the adviee of a smart, chubby …
A stargazer's delight, if, anyway -- and it's a big if -- you can take delight in gazing at Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie (lips and more lips), worshipfully photographed by Bojan Bazelli, and pamperingly enshrined in an ambience of pristine showroom opulence. There is space in this firmament for …
The gang of scammers and heisters reassembles on a weak premise (revenge for the backstabbed and cardiac-arrested Elliott Gould), weaker even than the deeper premise of making a huge pile of money for Warner Brothers. Despite the "emotional" motivation, there is no loss of smugness (only a loss of Julia …
The studio rep at the screening asked that both audience and critics not provide any spoilers for this, Quentin Tarantino’s ninth film. But Tarantino himself tells you everything you need to know on the “what happens” front with the title: the fairy-tale formulation that pauses before telling you the setting. …
Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood — The studio rep at the screening asked that both audience and critics not provide any spoilers for this, Quentin Tarantino’s ninth film. But Tarantino himself tells you everything you need to know on the “what happens” front with the title: the fairy-tale formulation that …
A gentle snore on the subject of two Montana brothers raised by a Presbyterian minister to reverence fly-fishing and God but fly-fishing more. Like the prior two movies that Robert Redford elected to direct and not to appear in -- Ordinary People and The Milagro Beanfield War -- this one …
A metropolitan murder mystery that, in the Golden Age of the detective novel, might well have appealed to Ellery Queen: somebody is killing people in graphic illustration of the Seven Deadly Sins, and littering the crime scenes with quotations from Milton, Shakespeare, etc. We do not now, naturally, have an …
A metropolitan murder mystery that, in the Golden Age of the detective novel, might well have appealed to Ellery Queen: somebody is killing people in graphic illustration of the Seven Deadly Sins, and littering the crime scenes with quotations from Milton, Shakespeare, etc. We do not now, naturally, have an …
A metropolitan murder mystery that, in the Golden Age of the detective novel, might well have appealed to Ellery Queen: somebody is killing people in graphic illustration of the Seven Deadly Sins, and littering the crime scenes with quotations from Milton, Shakespeare, etc. We do not now, naturally, have an …
Jean-Jacques Annaud's true-life odyssey of a self-centered mountaineering glory-seeker and uncommitted Nazi Party member who becomes a better person in the aura of the juvenile Dalai Lama. Mostly a big drag unless your pulse uncontrollably quickens at the sight of the bleached-blond Brad Pitt or the snowy Himalayas. The sound …
Animated Arabian Nights tale: the ancient mariner given a contempo makeover ("You catch that last move? Pretty cool, huh?") and matched with an equal-opportunity kick-ass chick. What trace of the old Sinbad remains? His supposed noble sacrifice at the end, returning to Syracuse to face the music for the theft …
Lorenzo Carcaterra's best-selling revenge tale, obligingly but dubiously filed on the nonfiction bookshelves, of a quartet of Hell's Kitchen hellions who are sent together to the Wilkenson Home for Boys, are routinely beaten, tortured, and sexually abused by a quartet of Gestapo-esque guards, and then -- with The Count of …
Guy Ritchie's mainstream rehash of his Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, the same collection of "colorful" characters (Bullet-Tooth Tony, Franky Four Fingers, Boris the Blade, et al.), the same hectic crisscross of underworld factions, the same violent collision of these, and the same stylistic superficiality, flashiness, trendiness, and conformism …
Last day at the office of a retiring Company man, or CIA agent to you laymen, Robert Redford. He has just learned that his prize protégé, Brad Pitt, has gotten himself arrested on an unauthorized mission in China, and is scheduled for execution in twenty-four hours. His superiors, mindful of …