Carefully drawn family portrait in a rough, grainy, indifferent image, a “nontraditional” family let’s swiftly say: two lesbian “Moms” or “Momses” with a biological son and daughter old enough to be curious as to the identity of their sperm-donor dad, who turns out to be a health-food restaurateur and organic …
Romantic-comic trifle to do with two divorce lawyers of opposite sexes locking horns in the courtroom and bumping uglies in the bedroom. In essence, it asks Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore to be Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Moore is enough of an actress to respond to the challenge, however …
Because it's a sequel, there is understandably less time set aside for awe-struck wonder and a lot more of getting down to business: namely, dinosaurs chomping and stomping on humans. Jeff Goldblum, who is granted almost godlike stature in his trompe l'oeil reintroduction on screen, pretty well synopsizes the scenario …
Maggie’s (Greta Gerwig) plan is to get the man (Ethan Hawke) who left his wife for her to go back to said wife (Julianne Moore). Also starring Maya Rudolph and New York City. Adapted and directed by Rebecca Miller (The Ballad of Jack and Rose).
A multi-character affair traversing a single day in the San Fernando Valley -- in three hours of screen time. Paul Thomas Anderson, writer and director, starts off with a narrated prologue to set up the theme of chance and coincidence throughout human history, or at least throughout the last century …
A valiant performance from Sigourney Weaver, big, bold, daring, dauntless, yet always fully in control and thoroughly human. (Quite a feat, that, for an actress who can easily seem too good to be true: too beautiful, too brainy, too confident, too strong, too perfect.) But this is a complete movie, …
How much mercenary sex, rampant pill-popping, craven inhumanity, horrific violence, and full-on incest does David Cronenberg have to put into his Hollywood satire before you get the point? Really? That much, huh? Okay, here goes. Julianne Moore caps off her recent triumph as Best Actress in Still Alice with the …
Twenty years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, a married couple buckles under pressure when an actress arrives to do research for a film about their past. Directed by Todd Haynes (Velvet Goldmine) and starring Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman, and Charles Melton.
Another story about death that’s been done to death. Toni Colette goes full-cancer, Drew Barrymore acts the part of concerned BFF, and between them, the barbed one-liners metastasize almost as quickly as the tears. Though the outcome remains the same, if given the choice, in cases of terminal illness sagas, …
Freshman-level Ingmar Bergman: obvious observations on the stranglehold of family, on the occasion of a Thanksgiving gathering. And it doesn't, as Bergman didn't, shy away from the earthy side of life, either: a symphony of creaking beds after lights-out. (For laughs, a solo sleeper presses a pillow over his face.) …
Hugh Grant runs through (and through) his stammering, eyelash-fluttering, forehead-crinkling "boyish" repertoire in the course of his girlfriend's unplanned pregnancy: "If you have a baby, that means he's gotta grow up." Another Hollywood plunder of a product of the French film industry, (re-)written and directed by Chris Columbus, that deep-sea …
Writer-director Jane Anderson's adaptation of the memoir by Terry Ryan (the book's subtitle: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less), a valentine to a dutiful, long-suffering Fifties-era Catholic housewife who supplemented the family's meager income through the practice of "contesting," writing ad slogans and jingles for …
Gus Van Sant's remake (in color for a new generation unable to discern shapes and forms in black-and-white) scarcely merits discussion, but not because it desecrates the work of the Master. The 1960 original, already sullied by two sequels and a prequel, was below-average Hitchcock; and several better films of …
Gus Van Sant's remake (in color for a new generation unable to discern shapes and forms in black-and-white) scarcely merits discussion, but not because it desecrates the work of the Master. The 1960 original, already sullied by two sequels and a prequel, was below-average Hitchcock; and several better films of …