A global plague quickly dispatches Gwyneth Paltrow, but Marion Cotillard and Kate Winslet carry on the fight as noble doctors. Lawrence Fishburne is the solemn voice of humane science, like Dennis Haysbert intoning for Allstate Insurance. Steven Soderbergh directed with brisk, methodical care for the big vista and small details, …
Having taken on Being a Good Husband (and the importance of Jesus in such an endeavor) with Fireproof, the good people at Sherwood Pictures are quite naturally moving on to Being a Good Father (and the importance of Jesus, etc.). Law enforcement has taken the place of firefighting, for reasons …
A dud. The big team of writers pile up cheap violence, icky aliens, corny rustics, a ha-ha Mexican, a mystery woman reborn in a fire, a hummingbird, a boy and his dog, silly special effects, and a sense that both the Western and the sci-fi invasion genre are being buried …
What fun: a romantic comedy based on genuine human folly instead of some high-concept absurdity. Julianne Moore is a middle-aged woman adrift, so much so that she slips out of her marriage (to Steve Carell) and into another man's bed. Pathos ensues, with many of the laughs arising from moments …
A rending, talky documentary by Yoav Potash about Deborah Peagler, an L.A. black woman abused by the “dreamboat” husband who pimped her. Her effort to escape with her kids led to his death and won her an absurdly stretched sentence, though she was a model prisoner and suffered cancer. Pro …
Freud may be out of fashion, but he shouldn’t be boring. Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and Jung (Michael Fassbender) and their patient who became a brainy disciple and colleague, Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), trade analytic ideas and furtive, sado-masochistic feelings. Knightley bravely uses her beauty, even jutting out her jaw a …
Two American businessmen (Emile Hirsch, Max Minghella) meet two nifty girls (Olivia Thirlby, Rachael Taylor) in a Moscow dance bar. Then the aliens arrive, looking like falling Christmas décor as they land but invisible as they track and kill. Chris Gorak’s generic film falls into clichés and isn’t very scary, …
Dark Horse is Todd Solondz’s most watchable film since Welcome to the Dollhouse. Come to think of it, it’s his only watchable film since Welcome to the Dollhouse. Solondz has long positioned himself as the heir to the Woody Allen throne. One look at his first feature, Fear, Anxiety, and …
A 2007 Israeli film inspired this fretful thriller about Israeli agents sent to Cold War East Berlin to abduct a notorious Nazi (acted with evil charisma by Jesper Christensen). Two acting teams play the flawed heroes (Sam Worthington, Marton Csokas, Jessica Chastain when young; Tom Wilkinson, Helen Mirren, Ciarán Hinds …
Alexander Payne’s film is on Hawaiian time and floats well below his Sideways. George Clooney is the rich Honolulu lawyer whose faithless wife has crashed into a coma. He is also trustee for a huge patch of Kauai that excites his greedy relatives and his wife’s lover. His trip with …
A pretentious mess from Tony Kaye (American History X). Lean, saint-faced Adrien Brody plays a school teacher rightly cynical about the dismal system. He compounds the daily crisis by encouraging the fantasies of a neurotic girl and nurturing a nymphetic drug whore (Sami Gayle). The story is alarmed gibberish, providing …
What a premise: goodhearted, patriotic Iraqi soldier gets forced to serve as body double for the drug-addled, trigger-happy, horndog son of Saddam Hussein. A genuine existential crisis — how do I do my job without losing my very self? — with sex and violence to keep things rolling. Sadly, both …
Motor “visionary” and motormouth Vince Vaughn hedges about asking lover Jennifer Connelly to marry him and instead invades the privacy of his chum and biz-partner Kevin James, whose wife (Winona Ryder) has secret heat with a stud muffin (Channing Tatum). Shallow Chicago images, fill-in music, male bonding via sports and …
A tale of a tail. The dolphin is Winter, a sea critter that lost its tail in a crab trap, was rescued by humans, then fitted with a prosthetic for use in its new Florida home. Charles Martin Smith (the actor from American Graffiti and Never Cry Wolf) directed with …