Hard-sell inspirationalism. A brainless hulk and a humpbacked little crippled genius form a bond in middle school. More than a bond, they form a unit: a piggyback entity self-dubbed "Freak the Mighty." (We're supposed to cheer when they dunk a basketball in gym class, but the editing convinces us it …
Ron Underwood's fast and loose remake of Merian Cooper's and Ernest Schoedsack's Good Ape followup to their King Kong. The ape is good indeed. The sense of scale of the humans to the beast -- smaller and cuddlier than Kong but nimbler as well -- is quite exciting; and the …
Tough-talking, improvisational-sounding punks (fuck this, fuck that) in a rough part of Boston. Several shakes of ersatz Scorsese, a pinch or two of imitation Tarantino, and nothing at all to identify filmmaker Ted Demme as his own man. With Denis Leary, Ian Hart, Noah Emmerich, Famke Janssen, Colm Meaney, Martin …
Revealing and illuminating and inspiriting glimpse into the life of the theater. Revealing enough, in fact, to make you marvel that anyone would voluntarily elect to go into it. Chris Hegedus's and D.A. Pennebaker's scrappy backstage documentary is more or less the straight version of Waiting for Guffman, a visual …
Romantic comedy with a clearly staked-out area of interest -- the baggage of past relationships -- and a novel approach to it: the eaten-alive lover joins the ex-boyfriend's therapy group for reconnaissance purposes. (Further complication: he assumes the persona of his best friend, who in turn expects to get some …
It's the day of Clarissa Dalloway's big party, and she whiles away the hours thinking her thoughts in voice-over ("Mrs. Dalloway, Mrs. Dalloway, I'm not even Clarissa anymore") and remembering her young womanhood when she looked like Natascha McElhone instead of anything like Vanessa Redgrave, and poor suicidal Septimus (Rupert …
The legend of a Chinese Joan-of-Arc who conceals her sex in order to take her father's place in the Imperial army permits the Disney animation team to pick up their ridicule of masculine roughness-and-toughness right where they left it in Hercules, and to press onward with it. This of course …
The sight of Billy Crystal alongside pro basketballer Gheorghe Muresan is sort of funny -- a good two-foot difference. But that's the height of the humor. As this is a Billy Crystal comedy -- about a small-time talent agent who discovers a skyscraping Romanian with a weak heart -- it's …
British filmmaker Ken Loach, up to his elbows again in the proverbial kitchen sink, arranges an across-the-great-divide romance between an on-the-dole and on-the-wagon (hence the title, in the form of the AA salutation) volunteer soccer coach and a genteel middle-class social worker, who happen to have a mutual interest in …
Hayao Miyazaki anime classic about a pair of sisters who move to the country and make friends with a critter in the woods. Well, more monster than critter. But friendly!
Hayao Miyazaki anime classic about a pair of sisters who move to the country and make friends with a critter in the woods. Well, more monster than critter. But friendly!
Hayao Miyazaki anime classic about a pair of sisters who move to the country and make friends with a critter in the woods. Well, more monster than critter. But friendly!
The title character is a Chicago cop (Samuel L. Jackson), renowned for his diplomacy in hostage situations, who is forced by unimaginative scriptwriting to do an about-face and take a few hostages of his own in order to clear himself of his partner's murder. The problem for director F. Gary …
Crime-spree chronicle, set in the Twenties, based on fact. Very lightweight, and heavily dependent on the elusive charms of Matthew McConaughey, Ethan Hawke, Skeet Ulrich, and Vincent D'Onofrio in underdefined roles: "Just a bunch of please-and-thank-you country boys." (Their main claim to sympathy, if not to fame: they never actually …
The forces of Fate, flexing their muscles in showy fashion, prevent Mr. and Ms. Right-for-Each-Other from crossing paths until just before the final curtain. Both paths are rocky, the more so because the agitated camera seems unable to commit to a position, a composition, an angle, anything. Any smoothing-down of …