More of the same from director Peter Jackson, here pulling a proper Lucas and giving us the first installment of a prequel trilogy to his earlier three-parter, The Lord of the Rings. (Then, he was adapting three books; now, he's stretching just one, packing a straightforward quest with all manner …
Look, if you were as bloated as The Hobbit trilogy, you'd probably be showing signs of exhaustion toward the end of a nearly nine-hour runtime, too. And if your films were as stupidly profitable as director Peter Jackson's, you'd probably be just as blind to your own cinematic sins. So …
Peter Jackson continues his mad quest to transform a ripping children's book into an all-encompassing epic. The result is a road movie with entirely too much baggage, a slog through the mires of exposition and special effects. With all the dwarves, wizards, hobbits, orcs, wargs, elves, spiders, dragons, man-bears, enchanted …
Randall Wright’s documentary about the English artist is forced to trade drama for detail: that’s what happens when your still-living subject has led a relatively happy, comfortable life. (Yes, he was born into English austerity during the war years, and yes, it wasn’t easy being gay, but he still comes …
It’s tempting to call director Alexander Payne’s latest a kind of Dead Poets Society for grownups. Not that Peter Weir’s film was childish. But Payne’s is definitely more adult, both in its sensibility and its focus. There is the obvious similarity of setting and aesthetic: a private school for boys …
Following his embodiment of American foreign policy in Captain Phillips, Tom Hanks looks to embody American economic policy as Alan Clay, a man who once voted to move Schwinn’s bicycle production to China, and who now finds himself trying to hawk IT for an unbuilt city of the future in …
In 2008, French director Leos Carax directed "Merde," the centerpiece segment of the film Tokyo! The story featured a trollish redhead in an ill-fitting green suit who popped out of the sewers at odd moments to nastily harass the general populace. Apparently, Carax wasn't finished with this charming creation (played …
Three regular guys decide to kill their three horrible bosses; hijinks ensue. There are hints of the kind of gleeful malice (on both sides of the employee-employer divide) that could make this kind of story into a wicked black comedy — Jennifer Aniston has the most fun of anyone as …
Remarkable: a sequel that actually scales down from its predecessor. The high concept — workers of the world, kill your boss! — dispensed with, our working class heroes Nick, Kurt, and Dale (Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, and Charlie Day, clearly enjoying themselves and each other) can relax and get down …
Director and co-writer Scott Cooper re-teams with his Out of the Furnace star Christian Bale to tell the story of Captain Joseph J. Blocker, a man of war facing a violent transition — physically and otherwise — to peacetime living. After a lifetime spent killing people because those were his …
You might not think a film that opens with a bank heist gone bad during a water riot in future-dystopia LA would turn out to be a tender-hearted relationship drama, but pay attention: among the first things we see star Jodie Foster do are take a drink and look mournfully …
The lively undead. Yes, that's the legendary Mel Brooks you hear lending his voice to Great-Grandpa Vlad in director Genndy Tartakovsky's sequel to his human boy-meets-monster girl romantic comedy for kids, Hotel Transylvania. Maybe that explains the relentless, unending, benumbing avalanche of gags (visual and otherwise), puns, and one-liners — …
Domestic dysfunction from Korean director Sang-soo Im. The story is nothing new — sweet naïf gets ground under the moneyed wheels of her employers after crossing the semipermeable membrane of upstairs/downstairs relations in just the wrong way. But the telling is expert, with pacing so languid you almost don’t notice …
Flinty-faced youngster Saoirse Ronan (looking alarmingly like a young Lara Flynn Boyle) gets her shot as an action heroine in this survival/road trip story set in England after London has been nuked. Who is responsible doesn't matter much, because the sphere of that action is wonderfully small-scale and ordinary: a …