Discombobulating experience in the vein of The Neverending Story and The Princess Bride, a defense of books framed in the form of an ugly movie. Is the ugliness deliberate? Designed to send a repulsed viewer to the placid regularity of the printed page? The postulate here has to do with …
A murky exposé of big-bank chicanery, not stopping short of paramilitary hit squads, is only a posturing pretext for some pretty slick thriller maneuvers: the foot chase in pursuit of what turns out to be an empty car; the nifty detective work that reveals the presence and identity of a …
Satirical postulation of how the U.S. and the U.K., on idiotic intelligence, came together to wage war in Iraq (unnamed but unmistakable). The actors are real pros, and can well handle the rapid-fire dialogue, probably better than the overwhelmed viewer can handle it. The raggedy documentary-style camerawork, on top of …
High-concept comedy with and from Ricky Gervais, co-writing and co-directing with Matthew Robinson. It's set in an alternative universe where everyone by nature tells the brutal truth (even advertisers: "Pepsi, When They Don't Have Coke"), until the brutalized short portly hero, unable to make his rent, makes an evolutionary leap …
Doubtless not the sort of project that fans of director Clint Eastwood want from him, a Big Statement, no matter how characteristically understated. Marrying elements of the Great Man biography and the inspirational true sports story, it tells of Nelson Mandela’s first years as the first black president of South …
Davis Guggenheim, the ignored director of An Inconvenient Truth (all glory to Al Gore), essays a different sort of documentary, arranging a “summit” of electric guitarists, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, The Edge of U2, and Jack White of the White Stripes and the Raconteurs. Not much comes of the …
Romantic-comic triangle composed of a fifty-something divorcee, her remarried but re-interested ex-husband, and her too-good-to-be-true divorced architect: “Your age is one of my favorite things about you.” The grown children have no problems of their own, and the level of affluence — not to forget level of gourmet cuisine — …
Very large performance in a very long movie, Tilda Swinton as a foul-mouthed slatternly alcoholic in a harebrained kidnap scheme. Only when the kidnapped child gets twice kidnapped (the Coens could have wrung some laughs from this) does the suspense begin to build. Too little, too late. With Aidan Gould, …
As per its punchy subhead, this is “based on two true stories,” parallel stories of feminist self-determination, set half a century apart, then and now. One focuses on Julie Powell, self-made blogger, daily chronicler of a year-long project to cook her way through volume one of Mastering the Art of …
A schoolgirl’s sealed submission to a time capsule fifty years ago seems to have predicted every major calamity up to the present and beyond. A couple of authentically nightmarish disasters and a couple of creepy moments with a group of silent stalkers known as the Whisper People provide small compensation …
Will Ferrell, a time hole, some decent prehistoric creatures, and a total lack of discipline, an utter uncertainty whether to spoof the Lost World sort of adventure story or to make dumb jokes about any damn thing. With Danny McBride and Anna Friel; directed by Brad Silberling.
Light sport made of a great figure, Tolstoy in his “eccentric” later years of anti-materialism, nonresistance, celibacy, vegetarianism, or, in short, Tolstoyanism. Under the starry eye of the author’s new secretary, a battle of wills, including a battle over the literal will, boils up between his leading disciple and his …
Disgust with the justice system drives a "brain," a diabolical omnipotent technological wizard, to punish the people who insufficiently punished the people who raped and murdered his wife and daughter. The humble flatfoot hits the nail on the head: "Un-fucking-believable." With Jamie Foxx, Gerard Butler, Bruce McGill, Colm Meaney, Leslie …
Sledgehammer antiwar film from the claustrophobic confines of an Israeli tank at the start of the Lebanon War, 1982. The noise and vibration of the machine in motion are horrific, the sweat and piss (copious excretions of the four occupants) can just about be smelled, and the gunsight provides, through …
In form a thriller, this feels more like an endurance test: so far-fetched, so encoded, so self-indulgent, it’s not apt to stir much curiosity or hope of satisfaction. Yet even though the course of action — from Madrid to Seville to the Spanish hinterland, in the company of a stone-faced, …