Homosexual love triangle orchestrated by Pedro Almodóvar, a-bubble with campy passions, and tricked out with some plot complications more tantalizing than finally satisfying. Eusebio Poncela, Antonio Banderas, Carmen Maura.
Zero. The obligatory sequel finds our mid-19th-century Batman in marital trouble, continually called away to fight for California statehood and never able to get away on a vacation with the wife and kid, now ten years old even though it's only seven years since the previous installment. "If you walk …
Notwithstanding the Pulitzer Prize pedigree of the Oscar Hijuelos novel and the New York art-world patina of first-time director Arne Glimcher, this is at best a nightclub-crawl through 1950s tropical kitsch, an affectation of (and a show of affection for) a style, a sense of style, a stylishness, a lifestyle, …
The difference of one letter -- "s" rather than "r" -- marks rather than masks the difference between a remake and a sequel. In the cumbersome quarter-hour prologue, the original Zorro (Anthony Hopkins -- and what's the use of a mask when you're the only man in Old California who …
The relationship thing. Old marrieds, new marrieds, engaged-to-be-marrieds. Kicked around in dialogue that seems to have an ear cocked for a laugh track ("He's still the most charming man I've ever met. I just can't stand to be with him right now" and "Fifty percent of all marriages end in …
Just about the time the celibate, iceberg psychologist allows herself to be swept off her feet by a tattooed, motorcycling, ponytailed Puerto Rican, she starts to receive anonymous threats. The upshot: another black eye or two for the cinematic couch doctor. Ridiculous pose-striking sex scenes; ridiculous soft-focus photography, for that …
On the occasion of his 80th birthday, a legacy-minded pharmaceutical tycoon (José Luis Gómez) with billions to spare, and not a dime’s worth of prestige, toys with leaving behind a bridge to better humanity, before optioning the rights to a big screen adaptation of a Nobel prize-winning novel he's never …
It is one of the mysteries of cinema: the production can be slick as a hockey rink, the camera movements agile and athletic, the angles exalting, the action unrelenting, the overall direction giddy with the joy of creation, and still the movie can be stupefyingly dull. This second sequel to …
Angelina ("Fat Lips") Jolie debarks in horse-and-buggy Havana, a mail-order bride from Delaware, bearing a trace of her British accent from Lara Croft: Tomb Raider as well as a ready explanation for why she looks in person nothing like her homely photograph: it's because she didn't want a husband who …
Here is the privilege of artistic reputation: even your fallow periods may serve as fertile ground. When we meet filmmaker Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas, low-key and soulful as the stand-in for writer-director Pedro Almodóvar), he is floating underwater, eyes closed, motionless, not even a bubble escaping his nostril. An artist, …
Best buddies Woody Harrelson and Antonio Banderas are has-been boxers matched against one another as last-minute replacements on the undercard of a Mike Tyson fight in Las Vegas. A nice idea, thrown away on the lowbrow. (Didn't the management of Mandalay Bay read the script before granting permission to film? …
Charismatic outlaw Puss in Boots discovers that his passion for peril and disregard for safety have taken their toll. Puss has burned through eight of his nine lives, though he lost count along the way. Getting those lives back will send Puss in Boots on his grandest quest yet. Antonio …
Charismatic outlaw Puss in Boots discovers that his passion for peril and disregard for safety have taken their toll. Puss has burned through eight of his nine lives, though he lost count along the way. Getting those lives back will send Puss in Boots on his grandest quest yet. Antonio …
Charismatic outlaw Puss in Boots discovers that his passion for peril and disregard for safety have taken their toll. Puss has burned through eight of his nine lives, though he lost count along the way. Getting those lives back will send Puss in Boots on his grandest quest yet. Antonio …
Another dose of foam-rubber animation, rapacious capitalism, mainstream hipness, and coy vulgarity ("It looks like we're up Chocolate Creek without a popsicle stick"). Viewers of the forerunner will know what they are in for, and will have only themselves to blame. One new character, Puss 'n Boots, is well drawn …