An all-night rave in a San Francisco warehouse, with an ensemble of unfamiliar faces. Vastly knowledgeable, thinly informative, nowhere near as slick and entertaining as it means to be. With Mackenzie Firgens, Lola Glaudini, Denny Kirkwood, Hamish Linklater, Rachel True; written, directed, and edited by Greg Harrison.
An all-night rave in a San Francisco warehouse, with an ensemble of unfamiliar faces. Vastly knowledgeable, thinly informative, nowhere near as slick and entertaining as it means to be. With Mackenzie Firgens, Lola Glaudini, Denny Kirkwood, Hamish Linklater, Rachel True; written, directed, and edited by Greg Harrison.
After a reign of three brief years, Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet is overthrown as the worst Hamlet in screen history. It was no problem to modernize the setting by moving the action to the Hotel Elsinore, New York headquarters of the multinational Denmark Corporation; but we are still stuck, even in …
Three grown-up, go-getter sisters encumbered with a Problem Parent: three top-line actresses (Meg Ryan, Lisa Kudrow, Diane Keaton) encouraged to give actressy performances by their actress-director (Keaton again). Ryan receives the most encouragement, and commits the worst offenses. The script is by the Ephron sisters, Delia and Nora, so it …
Fey relationship comedy revolving around an unlucky-in-love New Yorker (Marisa Tomei) whose new suitor (Vincent D'Onofrio) claims to be a "back traveller" from the year 2470, where, it develops, he had fallen in love with a photograph of her (how romantic!) and whence he has come to rescue her from …
Cool-cat comedy centered around the owner of a used-records store called Championship Vinyl, his love life past and present, and his two nerdy clerks. The arcane shoptalk will perhaps be of interest to those who can decipher it, but it makes no noticeable effort to engage the outsider. The musical …
Studious plodder about the generational clash among Tibetan tribesmen: rival caravans of salt-packing yaks, driven through perilous mountain passes, one by superstitious elders, another by agnostic juniors. It's a kind of cattle-drive Western, except that it's the East, it's yaks, it's mountains, and (aside from those mountains) it's unexciting. Directed …
Good creepy title, even if it was already taken (for one of the Gideon Fell mysteries by John Dickson Carr). The more fitting title, Invisible Man, was already taken, too, but the present title fits well enough when our latter-day invisible man (a cocky, smart-assy Kevin Bacon: "I am a …
Tasteful, artful, generally faithful treatment of the Edith Wharton novel. If it naturally lacks the "personal" quality of Terence Davies's autobiographical work — Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes — it at least earns him credit for having selected a first-rate piece of literature. And it does …
A major ouch. The kiddie-lit holiday homily — "Maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store./ Maybe Christmas perhaps means a little bit more" — illustrated in theme-park sets and costumes (rodenty snouts on all the citizens of Whoville save the little heroine, Taylor Momsen, and Christine Baranski). Jim Carrey, as …
A weekend round of "clubs, drugs, pubs, and parties." In-your-face youth film from Wales, light, playful, sloppy, and inconsequential. In their face as well, with a wide-angle or fish-eye lens. All of them are prone to show off in front of it. John Simm, Lorraine Pilkington, Shaun Parkes, Danny Dyer, …
I is Kuki Gallmann, divorcee, single mom, car-crash survivor (and later memoirist), who gives up la dolce vita in Italy for a new life in Kenya. The filmmakers, meanwhile, were dreaming more of Out of Africa, but they can match it only in topography and wildlife. Short-winded, stunted, unshaped scenes …
Margaret Cho -- Korean-American standup comic, erstwhile star of an ABC sitcom, self-anointed "fag hag" and "slut" -- in concert in her hometown of San Francisco, in a clear, sharp, spare image. We've got the best seat in the house, albeit a shifting seat. The material is mostly coarse and …
Unthrilling game of cat-and-cat, a beautiful young confident manipulative brunette and a beautiful young confident manipulated blonde, on a sketchily drawn playing field of posh Southern country club. With Susan Ward, Lori Heuring, Matthew Settle, and Daniel Hugh Kelly; directed by Mary Lambert.
It was about time. After years of promise, flashes of brilliance, stretches of virtuosity -- in Days of Being Wild, Ashes of Time, Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Happy Together -- Hong Kong's foremost fashioner of "art films," Wong Kar-wai, finally settles down and, in the popular phrase, puts it all …