Documentarians Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui strive mightily to dress an essentially tragic life in celebratory garments. They have some reason, starting with the astonishing professional rise of their subject: fashion designer Alexander McQueen, a “sweet boy from the East End” who breaks into the business in the most mundane …
If the original Mean Girls was a gentled version of Heathers — and yeah, that’s probably unfair, since films should be allowed to stand or fall on their own merits, but for viewers of a certain age, the similarities were simply too salient to ignore, what with the plucky outsider …
Simply astonishing: a documentary about marriage, family, romance, and cultural assimilation that keeps a light touch without veering into mockery, caricature, or broad comedy of the record-scratch variety. Ravi Patel is an almost-30 actor living in Los Angeles with his sister Geeta. His parents (both born in India) want him …
Simply astonishing: a documentary about marriage, family, romance, and cultural assimilation that keeps a light touch without veering into mockery, caricature, or broad comedy of the record-scratch variety. Ravi Patel is an almost-30 actor living in Los Angeles with his sister Geeta. His parents (both born in India) want him …
Aggressively dumb summer fun that sets out to offer something for everyone, and winds up giving nothing much to anyone. A complete list of ingredients would be exhausting; perhaps it’s enough to note that an opening scene in which a man (Jason Statham, slumming) makes the agonizing decision to sacrifice …
Aggressively dumb summer fun that sets out to offer something for everyone, and winds up giving nothing much to anyone. A complete list of ingredients would be exhausting; perhaps it’s enough to note that an opening scene in which a man (Jason Statham, slumming) makes the agonizing decision to sacrifice …
Aggressively dumb summer fun that sets out to offer something for everyone, and winds up giving nothing much to anyone. A complete list of ingredients would be exhausting; perhaps it’s enough to note that an opening scene in which a man (Jason Statham, slumming) makes the agonizing decision to sacrifice …
Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s solid sports documentary takes its name from India’s Mount Meru, which features a fin-shaped granite peak that has thwarted many of the world’s best climbers, including the three-man team of famed veteran Conrad Anker, his protégé Jimmy Chin, and relative newcomer Renan Ozturk. But …
Writer-director Michel Gondry mashes up a coming-of-age story and a road movie by sending his titular pair (the first is small enough for his age to be mistaken for a girl, while the second smells of his time spent tinkering with old engines) off through the French countryside in a …
The tension in producer-writer-director Jonah Hill’s evocation of a recently bygone era (he was 13 in 1996, just like his protagonist here) is there from the outset: in the opening scene, older brother Lucas Hedges beats the crap out of slight star Sunny Suljic. Heads up, folks, this is a …
How to hide the fact that your modern-day iteration of William Shakespeare’s enchanted rom-com plays like a clever college kid’s ambitious-to-a-fault senior thesis project? (Looky here: color filters to indicate mood!) Maybe slip in a play-within-a-play so self-consciously awful that it makes you shine with professional polish by comparison. (You …
Steven Okazaki’s matter-of-fact documentary, narrated in matter-of-fact monotone by Keanu Reeves, displays a polite reticence toward is own tantalizing premise: that noted and prolific Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune had much in common with the samurai he so frequently portrayed. To wit: a man of great discipline and power, a strong, …
Remember 60 Minutes, America’s first TV news magazine? Remember its tenacious terrier of a host, Mike Wallace? No? Okay, how about this: remember Bill O’Reilly, former Fox News superstar? Yes? Well, this documentary opens with a conversation between O’Reilly and Wallace in which the latter tries to scold the former …
Miles Davis biopic, less about making art than it is about everything that gets in the way of that —mostly commerce, but also relationships: some old (a lost love), some new (a pesky journalist looking to tell a comeback story), and some ongoing (an even more pesky recording industry looking …