Remember the first First Blood movie? You know, the one in which America was shown to be rotten for how it treated its returning vets, but hot damn, America sure did produce some badass military heroes like John Rambo. This is a bit like that: America signed up a whole …
Director Mel Gibson’s first film since 2006’s Apocalypto is visceral proof that the years haven’t done much to change him, at least as a filmmaker. He still loves outliers isolated by their beliefs, in this case a real-life Seventh-Day Adventist named Desmond Doss who wants to serve his country but …
Remember movies? The Coen brothers do. Westerns, romances, musicals, dance extravaganzas — the works. (All of which are on gorgeous, indulgent display here.) Millions of people used to look to them for — in the words of Capitol Pictures’ Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) — “information, uplift, and yes, entertainment.” Kind …
The question mark in the title of Penny Lane’s documentary on The Satanic Temple is integral to the story she’s telling. Like Satan himself — the original disrupter in the Garden of Eden, the rebel and accuser who bedevils the righteous — Temple co-founder Lucien Greaves is a troll. His …
There’s a lot to forgive in writer-director Frédéric Tcheng’s documentary about the fashion designer who went from putting the pillbox hat on Jackie Kennedy to declaring that he wanted to dress all of America, starting with the framing device of a lady investigator trying to figure out “Whatever happened to …
“Ring sense is an art,” intones legendary boxing trainer Ray Arcel (Robert De Niro) at the beginning of this strange and scattered Roberto Durán (Edgar Ramirez) biopic, “you’re either blessed with it from the day you’re born, or cursed without it until the day you die.” It’s as good a …
Director Todd Phillips remakes his hit comedy The Hangover — a story about bachelor-party boys who wake up with an absent friend and no memory of the night before — only this time it’s bigger, louder, dumber, and completely joyless. (Original touch: a cute little monkey who smokes, deals drugs, …
A small-scale, big-star character study of exceedingly humble ambition. Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air, Drinking Buddies, Pitch Perfect) is Jenny, a young woman who goes to live with her brother Jeff (writer-director-star Joe Swanberg) and his wife Kelly (a charming Melanie Lynskey) after a bad breakup. She promptly goes …
The first installment of director Christopher Landon’s horror riff on Groundhog Day worked its premise to amusing enough effect: grief-damaged young woman Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) gets trapped in a time loop that sees her killed again and again on her birthday, but she manages to use said loop to …
Rupert Everett directs, writes, and stars in the story of writer and bon vivant par excellence Oscar Wilde’s precipitous decline — healthwise and otherwise — following his release from two years’ hard labor in prison for the shocking (shocking) crime of sodomy. Everett embodies Wilde as a magnificent ruin, broken …
The theme is right there in the opening shot: a pilgrim’s parade of trucks and RVs, winding their way through bucolic countryside on their way to tailgate before a Penn State football game. But oh, what’s that in the lower left of frame? Why, it’s a row of trashcans and …
At long last: an action movie rendered in the manner of a First Person Shooter video game, right down to the regeneration of characters, humorous and/or expository cutscenes, the acquisition of bonus life packs along the way, and the endless final battle against the taunting big boss and his minions. …
Near the end of director and co-writer Kasi Lemmons’ biopic of the greatest conductor ever to guide runaway slaves along the Underground Railroad, a Southern landowner, outraged at the way her “property” has been spirited away by the titular heroine, promises to catch her and burn her at the stake …
Lovely but slight, Haute Cuisine tells the (based on a true) story of a country chef — played with ease, energy, and middle-aged grace by Catherine Frot — who became personal chef to the president of France, all because she knew how to cook with the simple elegance of his …
Calling Jian Liu’s twisty follow-the-stolen-moneybag story an animated film might seem a bit of an exaggeration. Many shots are still illustrations adorned with a single moving element: a rising wisp of smoke, a flashing neon sign, a lone automobile. But at least the stills look good: clean, unbusy settings full …