Ron Howard, bloodied by the flopping of Cinderella Man but apparently unbowed, returns to the based-on-a-true-story sports movie. Here, he's gone to exotic, fleshy '70s Europe and the world of Formula One, where every race carries with it a 20 percent chance of death. Beautiful, brash British bad-boy James Hunt …
Two broken people — massive, insensate Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts) and wounded, miserable Stephanie (Marion Cotillard, scrubbed of both makeup and glamor) — warily, even unconsciously approach the prospect of supplying one another's deficiencies. Not out of charity, but out of ordinary, human need and the ordinary, human response to that …
A Proustian fairy tale for anyone old enough to have regrets, Safety Not Guaranteed is also good humanist sci-fi. The technology (whether or not it’s actually real) exists in the service of genuinely human problems. Disappointed young woman (Aubrey Plaza) sets out to write a story on disappointed older dude …
Yves Saint Laurent was undoubtedly a brilliant and significant fashion icon — just look at how many films have been made about him of late. You had 2010's documentary L'Amour Fou, 2014's Yves Saint Laurent, and now this entry, which largely dispenses with the whole "story of a life" and/or …
Documentary about the life and work of the Brazilian photographer Sebastio Salgado, co-directed by his son Juliano and his longtime admirer Wim Wenders (Pina). Or rather, about the relationship of Salgado's life and work: the way his life led to his work, and the way his work nearly wrecked his …
A Western with a story as uncomplicated as its camera filters are heavy (yellow for day, blue for night), made compelling by its cast and performances. Violence begets violence, the love of money is the root of all evil (or at least, the biggest evils), religion is a sham designed …
Maudlin drama that takes the bold step of giving us a heroine (Kristen Scott Thomas) who seems like she might be heroic in her quest to uncover the past, but then again, she might just be obsessed. Not every story needs to be told to everyone, not even the story …
What’s the old saw about war? That it’s long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror? Tweaked a little, the line serves pretty well as a description of writer-director Camille Vidal-Naquet’s story of a gay prostitute’s (Félix Maritaud) journey of…well, journey, anyway. All that’s required is the addition …
The most popular women's shoes at Bergdorf's sell for $6000 a pair. They can't keep them in stock. If just reading that fills you with egalitarian rage, then you will probably not enjoy this documentary profile of what is arguably the world's greatest department store. But if you can stomach …
Projects at the International Science and Engineering Fair are judged on creativity, scientific thought, thoroughness, skill, and clarity of presentation. Writer-directors Darren Foster and Christina Costantini's documentary on the 2017 ISEF doesn’t need to do too much on the creative front, given the ready-made storyline of smart kids with smart …
Anton Chekhov’s play about a couple of writers — one nascent, one established —and a couple of actresses — one aspiring, one not retiring — gathered for a family reunion at a lake house in the country proves to be unfilmable, at least here. It could be that the manifest …
If you’re reading this, odds are that you’re curious about the answer to the question, “What would happen if they released the full fury of Nicolas Cage’s acting insanity storm into a Middle Ages scenario full of knights and witches and magic Jesus books?” Alas, that question seems doomed to …
More tales of love and impending death among English retirees in India. This time around, the story is driven by the young proprietor Sonny (Dev Patel), who is simultaneously preparing to marry his fiancee and expand his hospitality empire. His ambition for the latter tends to overshadow his devotion to …
Fresh from releasing Minions, the #11 grossing movie of all time, and also its predecessor, Despicable Me 2 (#28!), the good people at Illumination Entertainment have decided to see if they can spruce up the less-successful Toy Story franchise, substituting domesticated animals for children’s playthings and imagining what they get …