Creditable retelling of an early chapter in Texas history ("As goes the Alamo, so goes Texas"), not as cumbersome as the John Wayne version of 1960, perhaps even a little cursory. Director and co-screenwriter John Lee Hancock humanizes the central figures -- Crockett, Bowie, Travis, Houston, though not the ogre-ish …
A heretofore unknown director, Sterling Van Wagenen, shows off a heart the size of a honeydew and a cinematic intelligence nearer a grape. In a dollhouse re-creation of Second World War-period New York, a traumatized French girl, methodically tearing up newspapers into tiny scraps, is coaxed back from the brink …
A young prostitute (with child in tow) is bounced from her “house” by the same law enforcement officers sworn to help keep her off the streets. In this case, writer-director Anahí Berneri’s fly on the wall technique frequently translates into long takes from a fixed camera giving ample time, if …
A relentless gallery of raillery aimed at introducing Steve Coogan and company’s Alan Partridge -the quick-witted and eminently inflated fictional radio and television host - to American multiplexes. The corporatization of a British radio station causes the recently axed overnight man (Colm Meany) to flip out: he ends up taking …
Dark comedy of home security, emotional insecurity, double-dealing, paranoia. Heavy-handedly directed (by Evan Dunsky) and broadly acted by the male leads (David Arquette, Stanley Tucci). With Kate Capshaw and Mary McCormack.
Unadventurous wilderness adventure about an uprooted Chicago Cubs fan and his younger sister who, escorted by a baby polar bear dubbed "Cubby," search the Alaskan mountains for their father, teetering helplessly on a precipice in his downed plane. (Yes, just to round out the "cub" motif, a Piper Cub.) Everything …
On her way to the most important meeting of her career, a New York executive is forced to share a rental car with her ex-fiancé's mother, only to discover that the mother is hiding a major secret. Written and directed by Christine Swanson, starring Renée Elise Goldsberry, Lynn Whitfield, J. …
Glenn Close, looking quite small, revives a role she did to off-Broadway acclaim 30 years earlier. Albert, a parched, remote, miserly, desexed “male” butler, is really a woman. His life at a Dublin hotel is mediocre, but Close achieves a sad, stricken pathos. She almost loses the film to Janet …
Comic nightmare on a family "tradition" whereby a son is expected to reimburse his father for every lira spent on his upbringing. (Due date: the day the son becomes a father.) Most of the action is set on the Paris-to-Rome night train, as the frantic debtor attempts to beg and …
Small-scale and stagy thriller about a standoff that results when ATF agents, tailing a Canadian gunrunner at the wheel of a stolen car, get thrown off the scent and pick up the wrong car, but still a hot car, occupied by three penny-ante criminals (Matt Dillon, Gary Sinise, William Fichtner) …
A novelist, needing to finish a book in thirty days to pay off a loan shark, dictates his prose to a stenographer-kibitzer, and both of them appear as characters in enactments of the text. (Dim echoes of Paris When It Sizzles, which had a better excuse for the enactments: they …
Hollywood's ongoing war against great children's books scores a late victory in Miguel Arteta's version of Judith Viorst's slim '70s classic. The technique for expanding a picture book to feature length film (granted, it's only 81 minutes) isn't great: after having the day in question, Alexander (Ed Oxenbould) wishes that …