Will Ferrell as a human raised by elves, leaving the womb of Santa's Workshop in full adulthood to track down his biological father, a bottom-line publisher of Kiddie Lit ("He's on the naughty list"). Directed by Jon Favreau, the film wants to play both sides of the street — to …
Will Ferrell as a human raised by elves, leaving the womb of Santa's Workshop in full adulthood to track down his biological father, a bottom-line publisher of Kiddie Lit ("He's on the naughty list"). Directed by Jon Favreau, the film wants to play both sides of the street — to …
Second-class documentary -- the video-transfer image ranges from poor to wretched -- on the seminal punk band who never quite hit pay dirt. The de rigueur backstage discord -- one's a doper, one's a drinker, one's a Right-winger who steals the girlfriend of the obsessive-compulsive lead singer -- will be …
A chance to see how the Swedish filmmaker Mikael Håfström might have got tabbed to direct the American thriller, Derailed. This two-years-earlier film, set in the time of Charlie Parker, Buddy Holly, and James Dean, is not a thriller per se, but rather a brutalizer, the story of an abused …
Italian women's film, from Turkish-born filmmaker Ferzan Ozpetek, filtered through the sensibility of a vaguely discontented wife, a drudging accountant in a Roman chicken factory and a moonlighting pastry chef too old (at thirty) to start anew as an apprentice baker, with a shiftless husband currently on the night shift, …
The second installment in an Alexander Sokurov trilogy begun with Mother and Son (still to come: Two Brothers and a Sister), no less abstract than its predecessor, but more abstruse in the bargain, less emotionally direct. It makes minimal use of the distorting lenses of Mother and Son, and maximal …
A native son of Georgia, back from the Big Apple, needs to whip the hometown church choir into shape in order to collect his inheritance from Aunt Sally. Not even the frantic amiability of Cuba Gooding, Jr., not even the transfusions of foot-stomping gospel music, can raise the flattened carcass …
A premonition again cheats Death, and Death again sets out to recoup his losses. Slapsticky shocker, with carefully and callously constructed chain reactions leading to ludicrously gruesome demises. Very little in between. With Ali Larter, A.J. Cook, Michael Landes; directed by David R. Kelly.
A premonition again cheats Death, and Death again sets out to recoup his losses. Slapsticky shocker, with carefully and callously constructed chain reactions leading to ludicrously gruesome demises. Very little in between. With Ali Larter, A.J. Cook, Michael Landes; directed by David R. Kelly.
Computer-animated fish story from the Pixar people (Andrew Stanton, director), by way of Disney, about a neurotically fretful clown fish by the name of Marlin ("Clown fish are no funnier than any other fish"), whose only surviving offspring, a normally inquisitive fingerling named Nemo, gets captured by a scuba diver …
Claude Chabrol, always looking for fault in the bourgeoisie, noses into the closets and laundry hamper of a French provincial family composed of a septuagenarian Auntie (Suzanne Flon, gaining strength with age), a political-upstart stepmother (Nathalie Baye), a philandering pharmacist father (Bernard Le Coq), a prodigal son back from three …
This month, the German Currents Film Festival proudly presents another two San Diego premieres at the Digital Gym. First up, Balloon, a fact-based tale, set during the cold war, of how two ordinary families attempted a daring escape along the East German border using a hot air balloon. It screens …
Errol Morris documentary, subtitled "Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara." It amounts to a sort of anti-war seminar chaired, hosted, conducted by the eighty-five-year-old former Secretary of Defense (a/k/a "Mac the Knife") throughout the first phase of the Vietnam War (a/k/a "McNamara's War"). What you think of …
Disney remake of the magical, mystical mother-daughter switcheroo, adjusted for youth's further usurping of the culture since 1977. The ostensible original idea was for the representatives of both generations to see through the other's eyes, but the bias in the remake tilts strongly toward the younger. The girl is a …
Gus Van Sant's self-imposed penance for the commercial indulgences of his Good Will Hunting and Finding Forrester and, in between those two, the Psycho remake: a laid-back survival tale, a stripped-down Walkabout, about two hiking buddies (Matt Damon, Casey Affleck) who take a wrong turn on the Wilderness Trail and …