The “noble” older brother of an abducted Mexican girl takes his rigid principles to L.A. (he’d sooner eat squirrel than dine with a drug runner), along with a sloppy handheld camera, on a private search-and-rescue mission. Amateurish first film from art-house entrepreneur Kim Jorgensen, a kind of throwback, despite its …
Another alarmist ecological documentary, the alarm in this case sounded over the projected extinction of the oceans’ edible population by the year 2048 or so, through the increased efficiency, capacity, and voracity of the world’s fishing fleet: “The thing is, we’re too good right now.” Director Rupert Murray follows the …
Kate Churchill’s breezy, informal documentary sets up a completely artificial situation to document. The filmmaker, a seven-year yoga practitioner, or in other words a bare tyro, wants to test the transformative powers of the practice, picks as a guinea pig a photogenic newbie of the opposite sex (a self-described “godless …
Rueful road movie, an American resetting of a Giuseppe Tornatore tearjerker, in which an ailing widower takes off cross-country in his all-brown wardrobe, New York to Chicago to Denver to Vegas, to visit individually the scattered adult children who can't make time to visit him collectively, uncovering lessons along the …
A natural for a documentary: auditions for a Broadway revival of A Chorus Line, a process that mirrors the original show, provides a privileged peek behind the curtain, introduces and reveals characters, generates sympathy and suspense, all without any special skill in presentation. Directed by James D. Stern and Adam …
Mike Judge, the Office Space man, never mind the Beavis and Butt-head man, goes blue-collar at a food flavoring factory, where his fund of observations of workers on the job proves skimpier. The owner and central character comes close to a complete cipher, although Jason Bateman’s flat-tire facial expressions serve …
Wes Anderson’s wised-up children’s film, a labor-intensive stop-motion animated adaptation of the Roald Dahl animal tale (reportedly he never visited the London set, but directed from Paris by E-mail) about a vulpine sophisticate who moves up in the world — out of a hole and into a tree — but …
Amazing but true story of Cold War espionage, a KGB agent passing state secrets to a French amateur stationed in Moscow, early Eighties. Amazing but true but amazingly, truly unsuspenseful and dull. But earnest and diligent. The two principals are played by Emir Kusturica and Guillaume Canet (film directors in …
Stripped-down action sequel. Or anyway, the title is stripped down, dumping the definite articles and demoting the nouns to adjectives. The tricked-out action, meanwhile, barrels ahead with total disregard for lucidity or credibility. It’s not precisely a reunion of the original four stars, Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster, Michelle …
A film à clef concerned with the suicide of a risk-taking French film producer modelled on Humbert Balsan. We are thrust straightaway into the flow of life, eavesdroppers, voyeurs on a harried shaggy-haired wheeler and dealer (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing) juggling two mobile phones on the sidewalk and in the car, …
A polite Alabama hick makes his rapid way in the New York underground of bare-knuckle boxing, a lazy daydream with pretensions of toughness. The dialogue periodically dries up, leaving the actors floundering. Channing Tatum, Terrence Howard, Zulay Henao, Michael Rivera, Luis Guzman; directed by Dito Montiel.
To the chain of chain-reaction predestined deaths — fourth installment in the series, even numbers directed by David R. Ellis — is added the amenity of 3-D, which transforms the people into 2-D paper dolls slotted into the middle distance, air in front and air behind. A lot of gore, …
Educational as well as motivational film about where our food comes from and where else we can turn. Documentarian Robert Kenner, guided largely by activist authors Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma), goes behind the persistent “pastoral fantasy” of agrarian America (“The reality is a …
"Please be advised," Milla Jovovich forewarns the filmgoer straight to the camera, "that some of what you're about to see is extremely disturbing." Purported docudrama, more accurately documalarkey, about a whispery psychologist, as interpreted by Jovovich, who stumbles on a case of serial alien abductions in Nome, Alaska, though the …
A monument of Success Going to One’s Head. The head in question belongs to writer-director-producer Judd Apatow, previously of The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, but more widely known as just producer and/or writer, weather vane, fashion plate, brand name, school headmaster. In these capacities he has apparently accumulated sufficient …