Inflated, arty, but satisfactory reworking of an old gangster-film formula. The sense of raising the bar (in the fashionable phrase) seems quite ostentatious at the outset, with its unmistakable evocation of The Godfather. These are Irish gangsters instead of Italian, and they are gathered for a wake instead of a …
Teen comedy for grownups, but not for squares, about an assortment of oddballs caroming off one another, never fitting together flush, at an exclusive private school called Rushmore Academy. The central oddball will not remain at the school for the duration, starting out on "sudden-death academic probation," frittering away far …
Ill-conceived American remake, under British director Peter Chelsom, of the 1996 Japanese film (not the 1937 Astaire-Rogers film), the original of which was a success as much artistically as commercially. The social stigma, for starters, which we learned was attached to ballroom dancing in the regimented Land of the Rising …
Multi-character cross-pollination romantic comedy, widely described as Woody Allenesque. This seems to signify that (a) it takes place in New York City; (b) the line, "What are you talking about?," is spoken frequently and disingenuously when the speaker knows full well what's being talked about; and (c) the writer-director is …
Takes its name from a team of investigative journalists at The Boston Globe, and provides a touching ode to the old-fashioned notion that some things simply need reporting; never mind the effort, the expense, or the effect on circulation. Here, the thing in question is the awful failure of the …
Neo-Capra political fable (the cusswords are a large part of the “neo-”) about a Regular Joe in Texico, New Mexico, who, through a Byzantine conspiracy of events, holds the single decisive vote in the Presidential election, subjecting him to round-the-clock media scrutiny and personalized campaigns from both parties. The shiftiness …
Charmingly sincere fairy tale of forgiveness, revolving around a kingdom known for its soup, the dark days that befall it, and its truthful, fearless, chivalrous deliverer, an undersized mouse with oversized ears and ego. A magnificent cast if you could see them, if, that is, they weren’t hidden behind stiff …
Tom Hanks, for the third time under director Steven Spielberg, as a monolingual visitor from abroad, forced to make a temporary home for himself in the International Transit Lounge at JFK Airport (amid numberless corporate plugs: Hugo Boss, Borders, Sbarro, etc.) when a military coup unsettles his fictitious homeland of …
Outmoded spy comedy about a husband-and-wife secret-agent team, and mutual-admiration society, who offhandedly dispatch thugs and terrorists in between wisecracks and parental duties (a bouncing baby girl named either Jane Louise or Louise Jane -- they haven't made up their minds). They are so pleased with themselves they're unlikely to …
Hollywood Semi-Confidential: a fictionalization of producer Art Linson’s chatty, catty tell-all. (The bearded, overweight Alec Baldwin, for example, becomes a bearded, overweight Bruce Willis, “as himself.”) The producer protagonist is curiously undercharacterized — though heftily embodied in Robert De Niro — and the fictionalizing renders the whole thing less personal …