Horns blazing, congas calling, the sultry Havana sounds waft to hipster New York in the bop era. With singer Rita and pianist Chico at passionate center, the story is simple, but so are many great songs and most good cartoons. The three directors serve up a pleasurable, animated salute to …
A hardy film crew went deep into the jungles of Uganda and the Ivory Coast to film wild chimps. This Disney release has some old Disney flavor, with perky songs, Tim Allen's narration (“This is Freddie -- he's large and in charge”), and an overlay of humanized drama about an …
Spider-Man meets X-Men in the story of an outcast high-school kid who gains incredible powers and ultimately decides that he’s now better than all those regular people who used to put him down. But the best part of the story is what comes in between those events: a growing friendship …
The Wachowski Manifesto, or maybe just their apologia. Together with co-director Tom Tykwer, the W siblings have taken David Mitchell's multi-story, mutli-genre novel and made it into one (very) long and earnest plea for individual freedom and dignity in the face of oppression, whether it's gays oppressed by polite society, …
Three spoofs for the price of one. Gangsters, the living dead, and the almost dead — played by a cluster of well-respected British character actors (Alan Ford, Honor 'Pussy Galore' Blackman, Dudley Sutton, Georgina Hale) drafted to occupy yet another nursing home filled with feisty oldsters — interface in this …
Star Henry Cavill is gonna play Superman! But not here.
Writer-director Steve Albrezzi tells the story of a girl (Amelia Rose Blaire) who graduates college at the top of her class, then loses her boyfriend and her car on the same day. So she has to bum a motorcycle ride off a mechanic to get to her big family graduation …
A Sundance favorite that once again proves the film festival should use invisible ink in its stamp of approval. Based on events that took place at a McDonald's in Kentucky in 2004, the by-the-book manager of a ChickWich restaurant (Ann Dowd, destined to be remembered come awards season) fields a …
Director Xavier Durringer imagines the political ascent of French president Nicolas Sarkozy. Denis Podalydès looks the part of the underdog, a slouchy duck of a man who likes to protrude his bottom lip. He sustains interest as Sarkozy, but it is Florence Pernel as his wife and top advisor who …
The camera looks for extremes in this action caper about transport ship smugglers. We are jilted between oppressive closeups and panoramic helicopter shots. Mark Wahlberg plays the reformed smuggler who is compelled back into crime to protect his family. Giovanni Ribisi, as the villain, rehashes his addled weasel performance from …
Ralph Fiennes, glowering like his Harry Potter villain Voldemort, is imposing and monotonous as Shakespeare’s fascistic, Roman hero Coriolanus, who lives for slaughter. Vanessa Redgrave dominates her every scene as his mother, a she-wolf of aristocratic pride who could have suckled Romulus and Remus. No milk could dilute the poisonous …
David Cronenberg directs the movie version of Don DeLillo's novel about a rich dude (Robert Pattinson) who tries to take a limo ride across Manhattan to get a haircut. Complications ensue.
Slender, small-breasted women, mostly naked and elegantly shot, are seen performing at the famous Crazy Horse club in Paris, although they are more Degas-truthful offstage than in their chic, vampy routines. Tourists, couples, and solo voyeurs form the audience. Found touches of humor inflect the deadpan lucidity of veteran director …
When you're tired of Jackie Chan, you're tired of dudes in wheel-suits speeding down the highway like a human scooter. This time, he's looking to recover 12 stolen heads. But there will be no recovering YOUR BLOWN MIND.