Boredom begins when a group of six top flight international astronauts undertake a mission to find life on Jupiter's fourth largest moon. From television footage to fixed surveillance cameras onboard the ship, the entire film tediously unfolds through the eyes of television cameras.(There’s a “Europa One” ident in the right …
An overexplained nightmare: explanations are what this remake has in place of the anarchic whimsy of the original. Why are the pretty young people going to hang out at a creepy cabin in the woods? Because they're trying to help their friend quit drugs, and this is her childhood getaway. …
Annette Bening loses her husband of 30 years (Ed Harris), only to then fall in love with a man who looks just like him (Ed Harris).
Something very close to a sex comedy for grownups. John Turturro writes, directs, and stars in the carefully crafted, beautifully shot story of Fioravante, a strong, silent-type florist who agrees to do a favor for an old friend (Woody Allen) whose NYC bookstore has just gone out of business. It …
Do you remember when the prospect of Robert De Niro in a mob-related movie was a little bit thrilling? No? Oh, well. Maybe go rent The Freshman, which has Brando doing the same sort of self-mocking turn as De Niro does here. Then you can have an argument about which …
The cars, they are very pretty. Vin Diesel's voice, it is very gravelly. The Rock, he is very large. (Though not as large as the muscle hauled in by the bad guys. Say this for the Fast & Furious franchise: it understands that it must keep topping itself in terms …
An all-star history of the environmental movement. Narration by Robert Redford and Meryl Streep! The Sierra Club! Love Canal! Earth Day! Greenpeace! Amazon Deforestation! Global Warming! Don't ask for a coherent point, except maybe that different people have cared about the environment in different ways and for different reasons at …
Director Bill Condon sets out to answer the question, "What would Benedict Cumberbatch look like as a blond?" He also sets out to dramatize the story of document dump site Wikileaks, when Wikileaks would much rather he dramatize the story of the stuff they leaked. Question for discussion: was Wikileaks …
Not knowing the box he bid on contained the negatives of an uncharted street photographer whose pictures would later become his own private money-spinner, geeky Chicago real estate agent John Maloof hit artistic and financial paydirt after essentially purchasing a stranger’s life at auction. Vivian Maier, an eccentric serial nanny …
Can we just go ahead and agree that the actress Greta Gerwig is (for better and for worse) our generation's Katherine Hepburn? Adore or despise, she is a force of nature, something to be reckoned with. Here, she makes vaguely misanthropic director Noah Baumbach put down his torturer's tools in …
Two turkeys (Owen Wilson, Woody Harrelson) go back in time to try to keep turkeys from becoming a traditional Thanksgiving dish. Go ahead, take your kids. Then, on Thanksgiving, explain to them that Free Birds was a bit of doomed wishing, kind of like the fake-out ending in Brazil. Then …
Like the Broadway-bound Ice Capades holding its first out-of-town tryout that it’s destined to become, Frozen is a glacially stiff, perpetually unamusing animated musical with a talk-singing score that will leave one pining for the lifeless soundtrack to The Princess and the Frog. Chris Buck (Tarzan) and Wreck-It Ralph co-author …
You know where this train is going before it leaves the station: the film opens with cell-phone footage of BART officers subduing a young black man who does not appear to require subduing. Then you hear a shot. The young black man was 22-year-old Oscar Grant, and Fruitvale Station is …
True-life unsolved mystery, set in the early ‘30s, about a young German doctor and his mistress who turned their backs on civilization to find the meaning of life on an uninhabited island. But his writing draws attention to their remote corner of the globe, and before long, paradise becomes the …
Gangster Squad may lack brains and heart, but it's got guts. You get to see 'em right at the outset, when a Chicago crook who dares to cross power-mad Los Angeles gangster Mickey Cohen (a guttural Sean Penn) gets ripped in half by a couple of sedans. (Then again, you …