Frederick Wiseman turns his camera on the famed art museum in London's Trafalgar Square. About the only thing we aren't made privy to is the recorded audio that plays as visitors wander from Old Master to Old Master. Everything else — from PR strategy meetings, to framemakers, to restorers, to …
Loki! I mean, Tom Hiddleston! Swoon! Plus Shakespeare, I guess. Something about Romans and politics and popularity.
Oh, man, I was totally ready to dismiss this one as Aaron Paul's deep downgrade in the costar department (Bryan Cranston swapped out for a Ford Mustang) until I got to Michael Keaton as 21st-century Car Talk host, saying that he could feel, "love, vengeance, and motor oil all swirling …
Quite possibly the most conventional and conservative comedy featuring two straight dudes engaged in a dildo swordfight you'll see all year. Director Nicholas Stoller's (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) story of a ludicrous "battle" between new parents (Seth Rogen and an uncommitted Rose Byrne) and the freshly transplanted fraternity next door lets …
For an 90-minute farce about the battle between an upwardly mobile young family (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne) and the principled sisters next door who refuse to hold off partying during a 30-day escrow because partying is their whole darn raison d’etre — they started the thing because regular sororities …
Jonathan Demme returns to the concert documentary, this time capturing a late-career solo show from the man who famously sang, "It's better to burn out than to fade away." (Appropriately, it's a bookend playlist, with most of the songs hailing from circa 1970 or 2010.) Young himself may have faded …
Trite but visceral but gorgeous, director and co-writer Nichalas Winding Refn’s story of a teenage model (a pitch-perfect Elle Fanning) who discovers the dangerous power of her own beauty is the sort of expertly crafted depiction of youth’s instinctual narcissism you might like to show a newly self-conscious adolescent — …
For a good chunk of its tidy 96 minutes, Nerve is a brisk, clever take on Generation Smartphone. (What fun to see stars Dave Franco and Emma Roberts dashing out of Bergdorf-Goodman’s in their skivvies, tricked out of everything else but still clutching their precious, self-affirming technology.) The story concerns …
Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s ambitious three-hour pre- and post-WWII epic has the rare and curious distinction of opening with a villain-speech that’s actually supposed to inform your experience of the film: a Nazi docent’s lecture during a 1937 exhibit in a Dresden museum focusing on so-called Degenerate Art. Why …
Another holiday slaughtered, processed, shrink wrapped, and shipped to market by director Garry Marshall (Valentine’s Day). Another massive cast (Ashton Kutcher as the world’s prettiest grubby hipster, Katherine Heigl as a jilted caterer, etc.), another whirlwind of plotlines and significances: birth, death, first kisses, dreams come true, marriage, romance. Was …
The opening is pure [Shane] Black: we soar over the ruined ‘70s Hollywood sign to catch a boy sneaking his dad’s porno mag and ogling the centerfold, just before a car driven by said centerfold crashes through his house and plunges into the ravine below. The boy investigates, finds her …
Director Shawn Levy and star Ben Stiller both faltered in their recent attempts at grown-up, elevating wisdom pictures (This is Where I Leave You and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, respectively). So it's almost a relief to find them striding confidently here through the smooth, familiar terrain of entertaining …
A smartly built, chemically-enhanced Christmas story about growing up that you can't watch with the grown-ups — at least, not the ones who will get bothered by dick pics. The Night Before, which follows three friends (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, and Anthony Mackie) as they wind down a tradition of …
“Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid,” wrote Raymond Chandler about his detectives. Major Noredin of the Cairo police is himself mean, and also tarnished and afraid, but down those streets he goes anyway, trying to do at …