...in L.A. - get it? New York artist-girl (a highly sexualized Olivia Thirlby) camps out in the Silver Lake home of a Hollywood sound engineer, his wife, and their kids (one shared, one step). Almost everyone proceeds to get the itch: hubby for artist, wife's therapy patient for wife, daughter …
In 2010, Army Chaplain Justin David Roberts traveled to Afghanistan with the No Slack division of the 101st Airborne (motto: "No breather from work, no relief from combat, no request for respite") and brought his video camera. Here, he uses his footage to illustrate the story of several military operations …
Or, "Why Must I Be a Teenager in Love — the Gay Remix." Two beautiful adolescent boys with no fathers and lousy mothers — blonde Pim's is a floozy who'd rather be touring on the accordion circuit, while dark-haired Gino's is neurotic and frail — find comfort in each other's …
There have been movies named after feelings before — Contempt, Repulsion, Happiness, even Fear and Loathing (if only in Las Vegas) — but they tended to focus on the characters having those feelings. Here, director Mark Pellington seems to be aiming at a portrayal of nostalgia itself, with the people …
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nunnery? Full Metal Habit? Writer-director Margaret Betts takes a striking fact — the Catholic Church in America experienced a mass exodus of its women religious in the years following the Second Vatican Council — and uses it to craft a hysterical piece of fiction, shot …
The big reveal at the end of a magic trick is supposed to leave you shaking your head in wonder and asking, “How on earth?” But the big reveal that Morgan Freeman’s skeptical antagonist lays on Mark Ruffalo’s wounded trickster at the end of this sequel to 2013’s surprise hit …
An anti-Taken, though definitely not a Given. Rather, Baltasar Kormákur directs, co-writes, and stars as a surgeon (you know, a person who takes the Hippocratic Oath and vows not to play at God) who sets out to disentangle his beloved daughter (from his previous, failed marriage) from her punky-thuggy-druggy boyfriend. …
Vanessa Gould’s documentary look at the obituary department of the New York Times in action is as deceptive in tone as it is perceptive in vision. A strange air of calm rumination pervades the account, even as we watch a group of consummate professionals go through their daily, panic-inducing routine …
A throwback piece of good-looking sci-fi, starting with the gorgeous and haunting image of a shattered moon, its debris stretching out into orbit. Happily, we are spared the resultant catastrophes; the emphasis here is more on Tom Cruise's self-discovery than his badassery, and hardly at all on saving the world. …
High-tension CEO Tilda Swinton announces, during the bonkers opening scene set in her dead father’s infamous subterranean factory, the “discovery” of miracle superpigs and a decade-long contest to raise the most super pig of all. (Yes, their faces look more canine than porcine, but who wants to look a gift …
Spike Lee's remake of Chan-wook Park's celebrated tale of a man who is mysteriously imprisoned and then just as mysteriously released has plenty of spattered brain matter and sadistic gut-punches. What it lacks is the original's creepy heart. The villain of this piece needs to be Lecter-level compelling: rarely seen, …
Earnest but not overly sweet attempt to make the case for sexual restraint as the key to putting the rom back in rom-coms. Writer-director Rik Swartzwelder stars as Clay, a former serial seducer now living the life of a hermit while running an Ohio antique shop called Old Fashioned. (The …
If Clint Eastwood’s barely reformed killer was Unforgiven, Robert Redford is unrepentant in this love letter to…Robert Redford. He plays a friendly old-timer who’s just a lovable rascal at heart, a man serenely happy in his work — which happens to be bank robbing — and supremely gifted at slipping …
The studio rep at the screening asked that both audience and critics not provide any spoilers for this, Quentin Tarantino’s ninth film. But Tarantino himself tells you everything you need to know on the “what happens” front with the title: the fairy-tale formulation that pauses before telling you the setting. …