Julian Schnabel's second film is, like his Basquiat, a conventional, celebratory biopic on an unconventional, subcultural hero: this time the homosexual Cuban author Reinaldo Arenas. We take up his story in his female-dominated childhood (the boy lays his head against a tree trunk, stroking it, gazing at a group of …
Another week, another round of celebrity pantomimes, this time a biopic prime for Amazon, not theatres. Lucy (Nicole Kidman) loved logic, a trait that clearly did not find a home in writer-director Aaron Sorkin’s final cut. The pampered superstar couldn’t find a washing machine in a Maytag showroom. What would …
Alejandro González Iñárritu attends his film with such care and detail that, despite the squalor of the environment, we are left with an undeniable aesthetic. Javier Bardem, as the protagonist, accomplishes much with little, revealing a detached worry and guilt. While Iñárritu may amble too far with his plot, he …
Director Michael Mann situates Tom Cruise under a silver-fox hair dye in the back seat of a taxi cab crowned by an ad for Bacardi Silver. That matching-color fashion statement says a lot about this sleek, cool, preening, glamorous thriller in the Mann-ly manner (Thief, Manhunter, Heat, not to forget …
"I've seen it all, counselor," intones worldly-wise dealmaker Brad Pitt. "It's all shit." This is very close to the point of The Counselor. Pretty shit, pricey shit, exciting shit, lovable shit, even enduring shit - but still shit. The counterargument, to the extent that one is offered, is so brief …
Paceless, listless political thriller about a terrorist insurrection in an unnamed Latin American country that seems as though it must be Argentina. (Note the Calle Peron street sign.) Javier Bardem gives it some backbone as the honest-cop hero, humble, grave, apprehensive, all too human. With Laura Morante; directed by John …
Self-affirming, boastful, best-selling piece of nonfiction Chick Lit transformed into a two-and-a-quarter-hour blandishment for a major star. While there is a lot of sightseeing on the heroine’s Search for Self (“I want to go someplace where I can just marvel”), Italy for food, India for meditation, Indonesia for romance — …
A power outage during a wedding celebration lasts just long enough for one of the guests (Carla Campra) to be abducted (and later held for ransom) while Paco (Javier Bardem) fetches a generator. Given the paucity of visual information and/or character backstory that’s doled out during the 20 minutes that …
Spicoli can still surf. Other than that, little of interest transpires in this action-lacked drama about an 8-year-old assassination in the Congo that comes back to bite the titular triggerman (Sean Penn). The action is sparse, the pace sluggish, and, with very few brush strokes, Penn’s vacant turn as an …
Spanish sex comedy of constant provocation but no clear point. Bigas Luna, an even badder boy than his compatriot Almodóvar (and badder for a longer a period of time), has an eye for the sensual, the surreal, and the symbolic, as well as for the bleakest landscape and the gaudiest …
With Brad and Angelina on the outs, Sean Penn steps in and picks up what could have been one of her rejects. With Penn at the helm you know to expect good acting at its most serious from Charlize Theron and Javier Bardem. Was this released by River Road Entertainment? …
Almodóvar, heavily armed with his standard pots of garish color, but otherwise rather toned down. The tone, in fact, is quite uncertain: not quite light, not quite serious either, a bit salacious, a bit melodramatizing, totally uncommanding. The filmmaker takes little from the original Ruth Rendell novel: the wheelchair and …
Half a century of unrequited love, too much time for Javier Bardem to span persuasively, ceding the early years to a younger unmatching actor (Unax Ugalde), then acting awkwardly younger than he looks, then donning a series of stick-on mustaches from coal black to salt-and-pepper to sooty gray. To make …
When the Primm family (Wu, Scoot McNairy, Winslow Fegley) moves to New York City, their young son Josh struggles to adapt to his new school and new friends. All of that changes when he discovers Lyle - a singing crocodile (Mendes) who loves baths, caviar and great music-living in the …
Mildly maudlin group portrait of laid-off shipbuilders on the north coast of Spain, and their cheerless, unsmiling, grim camaraderie. The minor daily mortifications -- watching a soccer match from a free perch without a view of the goal, applying for a bank loan from a smug yuppie, splitting duties with …