Stephen King introduces a group of RV-driving New Age vampires, led by a bolero-topped seductress who goes by the name Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson). But rather than let his sustenance-seeking pseudo-family get blood under their fingernails, King has them vape the “shine” out of their victims. The cult lures …
A literary hack (Ewan McGregor) — “You name it, he ghosts it” — lands the plum assignment of, for a cool quarter of a million, polishing up the memoirs of a Tony Blair-ish former British Prime Minister (Pierce Brosnan), stepping into the shoes of the previous silent collaborator who has …
Steven Soderbergh’s latest attempt to subvert popular genre expectations results in an adequate 007 action/adventure picture. Mixed martial arts champion Gina Carano has the tough, tight look and smoldering dispassion the genre demands, but not even Meryl Streep could add depth to this. It’s easier to swallow than the average …
IMAX film on "the largest, most majestic creatures" — humpback whales. Narrated by Ewan McGregor.
No relation to the cigarette or its famous promo bellhop. Not much relation to comedy, either, as manic Jim Carrey seeks to jazz up this “based on truth” story about a liar, con man and escape artist. He flipped from church-going marriage to brazen ‘70s cruising as a gay party …
The beginning takes place in the vicinity of an Orwellian dystopia, where a closely monitored populace ("Sodium Excess Detected," reads out a urinal at a morning pee) must live in regimented drudgery and sterile isolation, under stricter rules against intergender "proximity" than at a Catholic-school dance, and with the desperate …
A bag containing cholesterol-free, nutrient-dense seeds that have the power to change the world falls into the wrong hands. Fee-fi-ho-hum! All of the costumes, elaborate sets, lush cinematography (thank you, Newton Thomas Sigel!), and naturalistic use of depth don’t amount to a hill of beans in this giant time-slayer. Talk …
Natalie Portman stars in Gavin O’Connor’s western about a woman who must seek former lover Joel Edgerton’s help in holding off a gang of baddies led by Ewan McGregor.
A smarty-pants comedy that outsmarts itself. It tells of your basic disgruntled ex-employee who storms the boss's office with a gun (ha-ha) to demand his job back, but who comes away instead with the boss's daughter as a hostage and without actually killing anyone. The bigger joke (ha-ha-ha) is, or …
Mark Herman's transplant to the screen, minus the first five words of the original title (The Rise and Fall of...), of Jim Cartwright's London stage piece, conceived as a showcase for the unsuspected talents of Jane Horrocks. Some of her abundant talents had of course been well known, from Mike …
The first film directed by character actor Grant Heslov has a promising premise (paranormal military research), plenty of script troubles (an investigative reporter's blathering narration, the disruptive channel-switching between periods twenty years apart, a sputtery and rudderless last act), and a couple of tickling performances by Jeff Bridges as the …
First directing job for Chris Noonan in the eleven years since Babe, an innocuous biopic on the author and illustrator of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, not to mention proto-feminist and proto-environmentalist, who braved the disparagement of gray-souled publishers ("Bunnies in jackets with brass buttons? However do you imagine such …
Baz Luhrmann's razzle-dazzle reconstruction of Gay Paree on Australian sound stages and inside computers. Nothing, no matter how overdesigned, overdressed, and overdecorated, is held onto for an adequate appraisal. Everything is handled as a hot potato. And the easy-come-easy-go juggling act takes on a rough resemblance to post-Satyricon Fellini filtered …
Ole Bornedal's American re-do of his own Danish thriller about a necrophiliac serial killer and the hapless morgue attendant who falls under suspicion. In this, Bornedal is following the route of the Dutch filmmaker George Sluizer and The Vanishing, except that as the Bornedal original went uncirculated in America, the …
Quick! Name a memorable Ewan McGregor performance. Neither can I. Who better to play a college poetics professor who, apart from being a principled sort, is utterly unremarkable? (DJ Qualls would have been the honorable choice.) Knowing a kosher salt when he sees one, a money-laundering Russian mob accountant (Stellan …