Word-pusher Aaron Sorkin makes his debut as a director, and whaddya know, he directs a lot like he writes: fast and smooth, bordering on slick. But just bordering, because love demands at least a soupçon of sincerity, and he’s found someone to love in Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain). She’s a …
Director Jodie Foster’s latest is one long series of narrative gotchas masquerading as moral or intellectual sophistication before finally revealing that it offers nothing more than world-weary sentimentality. (I guess after you’ve gutted everything else — moral outrage, systemic corruption, media vampirism, basic human decency, the plight of the common …
Early on in director, co-writer, and star Dev Patel’s madcap mashup of a movie, his protagonist Kid sets out to buy a gun. “You like John Wick?” asks the salesman. “This is the same gun he had, except made in China.” You know: a cheap knockoff. A cleverly self-conscious pre-emptive …
...because therapists don’t pay home visits. Liam Neeson gets transmogrified into a weirdly muscular tree-man summoned by the tortured psyche of young Conor O’Malley, who is plagued by nightmares about his dying mother. (As a withdrawn artist type, he’s also plagued by a nasty cardboard bully.) The monster promises to …
Everybody loves Mike and Sully, the scaresome monster team from Monsters, Inc. So maybe they’ll be happy to see them again as college students in Monsters University. So happy that they won’t mind the clichéd plot — lovable band of misfits in loser frat must rally to beat arrogant jerks …
In the latter days of World War II, a band of charming, aging misfits (Bill Murray! George Clooney! Bob Balaban! John Goodman! Matt Damon! Plus that French guy and that English dude!) is tasked with designating, preserving, and ultimately, recovering the art looted by the Nazis during their European conquest …
The moon landing was, among other things, possibly the greatest PR stunt America ever fashioned for itself. So even if it wasn’t a hoax executed by the late director Stanley Kubrick, it seems perfectly reasonable to assume that someone had a Plan B in case things went FUBAR. To wit: …
It’s a fascinating enough setup: stony-faced corporate risk-management consultant Lee (Kate Mara) travels to a rural scientific outpost to investigate an incident: it seems the project’s comparatively emotive artificial intelligence (Anya Taylor-Joy) has gone and poked out someone’s eye. There is talk of terminating the product, emotions and all. (Nobody …
Angels. Demons. Vampires. Werewolves. Witches. Warlocks. Monks. Goths. Rune tattoos. Tarot. Love triangles. The Chosen One. Twilight. Star Wars. The Matrix. Underworld. Men in Black. Hunters who get their power from angel blood even as they proclaim the equality of all religions. Armories under church altars. Closeted gays. Mommy issues. …
...need not make for a most violent film. Case in point: for his third feature, J.C. Chandor leaves behind the existential crisis of All is Lost and returns to Margin Call's explorations of morally murky moneymaking in New York City. This time, instead of toxic assets, there's an actual, physical …
What color is your sad, bleak underbelly? How about modest and moody, with an alt-folk soundtrack? Stephen Dorff, looking like Ewan MacGregor after a three-week drug binge, and Emile Hirsch, looking like Jack Black on an all-bourbon diet, play a couple of hard-luck brothers and self-avowed fuckups dealing with their …
Tober Heymann's documentary covers the life and lucky times of Ohad Naharin, from his youth as an entertainer in the Israeli army, to the series of breaks that helped him make it as a dancer in New York, to his canny rise as a choreographer for his own company, to …
The cutline for Bill Condon's latest reads, "The Man Behind the Myth." It might have been better put as, "The Man Behind the Mind." It's true that the film is driven by an ancient Sherlock Holmes' effort to remember the true story of the case that drove him into retirement …
Yes, it’s a Jim Carrey vehicle about a wisecracking corporate greedhead who rediscovers what really matters (wife, kids, etc.), thanks to a waddle of penguins that take up residence in his swanky NYC apartment. But this time there’s pain behind the joker’s mask, and the mask itself has a pleasing …