Fatuous chatter between mid-thirties lovers, two years together, an uptight American designer and a carefree French photographer, visiting her parents in Paris. Julie Delpy, surrounding herself with her actual family, and showing unknown depths of self-indulgence, is the star, director, writer, editor, composer, and vocalist over the closing credits. And …
Is the title a score? -- as in, the Fast and the Furious all knotted up at two. Or is it a head count, a poll? The ex-cop from Los Angeles (Paul Walker, resuming his role from the unquantified The Fast and the Furious of two years earlier) is undeniably …
Just diverting enough, thanks in large part to the weary charm of Denzel Washington's undercover DEA agent, and the earnest charm of Mark Wahlberg's undercover Navy investigator. (The wiseassery Wahlberg uses to cover the earnestness, alas, quickly wears thin.) Thanks also to a willingness to make almost everyone at least …
Long before fake news became the rage, the promises of fake press releases defined Hollywood hype. The deception lives on with the following heartless pledge: “For two couples, the future unfolds in different decades and different places, but a hidden connection will bring them together in a way no one …
Bernard Rose's latest adventure in adapting Tolstoy for the screen takes the let's-compare-generations story "Two Hussars" and sends it to Hollywood. Dad was a famous director; now the son is taking a crack at the game. And just to add a frisson of something something to the pot, the older …
Richard Davis shot himself 192 times. Why? To invent the modern-day bulletproof vest and launch a multimillion-dollar company. He was a hero to police and the military, until tragedy brought him down. His is an American story of guns, violence, lies, and self-deception.
Like Sin City, this takes its material from a "graphic novel" by Frank Miller, and in turn it takes from the film treatment of that one — or to be more precise, director Zack Snyder takes from director Robert Rodriguez — the same, or similar, unnatural light, "virtual" backgrounds, coarse-grained …
Casino heisters disguised as Elvis impersonators (including Kurt Russell, who had plenty of practice in John Carpenter's made-for-TV biopic on the King). Not the most logical starting point, this, for the slo-mo bloodbath that soon follows. The tone never does stabilize: coolness, callousness, phony sentiment, ga-ga action scenes, sadism and …
Zack Snyder, who has made a couple of comic-book movies of his own (300, Watchmen), wrote the script for this, perhaps his most comic-book movie to date. Some clarification is of course in order: "comic book" here indicates: a complete detachment from the actual constraints of physical reality (cascading sheets …
A tribe of subtitled vampires strategically targets the northernmost town in the U.S., Barrow, Alaska, hunkered down for a sunless month, free rein for nocturnal bloodsuckers. The majestic clouds and snowscapes on the last day of light ignite hope for a sense of style, but the superhuman strength and speed …
Fargo: the Next Generation? Perhaps, if by that you mean “brisk, violent, and largely unsentimental about the depths of human folly.” It’s also the least preening of Summer 2011’s many raunch comedies, content to spend its time among the genuinely raunchy. A would-be white-trash criminal mastermind (Danny McBride) straps a …
Documentary about the importance of running.
Honest-to-gosh Western, a rare sight in the 21st Century, thick as fleas fifty years earlier, when the original 3:10 arrived. The remake is done in the decadent style of shades-of-brown realism, luxuriantly whiskered and shaggy-haired, yet preening and grandiose, with amplified passions, topographical sprawl, and an overblown (and significantly altered) …
A documentary about a middle-aged white man's killing of a young black man after a confrontation at a gas station, and the subsequent investigation and trial.