Extremely ambitious and incredibly pretentious. Also false. A brainy, yappy New York boy (Thomas Horn) feels guilty about not answering the WTC calls of his doomed dad (Tom Hanks) on 9/11/01. He walks around New York looking for fishy clues, and a mute, grizzled man (Max von Sydow) tags along …
Down-to-earth flatfoot (Denzel Washington, always good to look at, to watch closely, to study) on the trail of an otherworldly serial killer, a fallen angel called Azazel, who has the ability, while manifesting no form of his own, to move from body to body at the merest touch. This makes …
Live-action (and Industrial Light and Magic) blow-up of the crudely drawn TV cartoon show, from Hanna-Barbera, set in suburbia, 2,000,000 B.C. The actors affect a 1950s sitcom, or 1930s vaudeville, style of performance: purposely primitive. And the dialogue strives for the cheerfully cornball: "What's his name?" "Bamm-Bamm." "Is that short …
For those who exited The Hangover Part II feeling their time and money well spent, this is the hair of the dog that bit you. The rest of humanity might consider a rabies vaccination before entering. This time, franchise creator Todd Phillips does away with the customary Mike Tyson cameo, …
The Coen brothers, as successful a pair as any in show business today, consider the fate of a '60s folk duo after one of them jumps off a bridge. (This being the Coen brothers, it is of course the wrong bridge: the George Washington instead of the Brooklyn). Surprise, surprise: …
The reunion of Papa Bear and Man-Cub ("You can take the boy out of the jungle, but you can't take the jungle out of the boy") for a reprise or two of the Oscar-nominated song (1967), "The Bare Necessities." Tail-chasing animated sequel that ends up pretty much back where it …
Wouldn't it be a riot if an American rube were installed on the English throne? Well, maybe if the moviemaker had any skill at fomenting a riot. Had, for a start, a plausible premise for one. What this moviemaker has is simply the Pygmalion story with an unprecedentedly thick pupil. …
The latest Kong borrows at least a couple of pages from the script of the latest Godzilla (unsurprising, since Max Borenstein co-wrote both) — notably, the jacking up of the big ape’s size to truly gargantuan (though he does seem to grow and shrink a bit according to the demands …
No you won’t. From Jessie Nelson, the man who brought us Stepmom, I Am Sam, and Fred Claus...need I go on? Staler than year-old rum cake and louder than June Squbb’s holiday sweater, Hollywood yet again ushers in the Christmas season with a dysfunctional family racing to get it together …
Writer-director Randall Miller incorporates sizable chunks of footage from his 1990 short of the same name, in the form of flashbacks to 1962, recollected by John Goodman in the present day as he lies dying in the back of an ambulance, victim of a car wreck en route to a …
Star-studded cast in a dim, disjointed, desultory satire about an over-the-hill folkie named Jack Fate, tabbed to headline a benefit concert in an ill-defined police state. Bob Dylan, besides playing the lead, co-wrote (with director Larry Charles) the self-referential script, but his assorted cryptic and gnomic comments provide little illumination. …
Joe Dante's mockery of, hommage to, and commentary on, the gimmicky grade-Z fright films of his youth. Typically, he doesn't know where to stop, or even slow down. Atypically, he at least knows where to start. A William Castle-ish huckster from Hollywood (or off-Hollywood) arrives in Key West to test-screen …
Plump and rubbery computer animation prefaced by a refreshingly retro (ca. 1960) two-dimensional title sequence. Safely recommendable to any child up to the age of five, and less safely as his age increases. The whole premise of a parallel universe of monsters making nightly forays into our own universe, bottling …