Substantially the same story as Capote a year earlier, an uncomfortable proximity that brings to mind the competing Columbuses of 1492: Conquest of Paradise and Christopher Columbus or the competing Earps of Tombstone and Wyatt Earp. A second account, written and directed by Douglas McGrath, of the birth pains of …

Anything-for-a-laugh homosexual romantic comedy, under the cloud of AIDS. Among the many-things-for-laughs: asides and soliloquies to the camera ("Why is the idea of a simple dinner now like an evening of Russian roulette?"); recurrent appearances by a Mother Teresa look-alike (on the spot after a gay-bashing incident, etc.); a fantasy …

A valiant performance from Sigourney Weaver, big, bold, daring, dauntless, yet always fully in control and thoroughly human. (Quite a feat, that, for an actress who can easily seem too good to be true: too beautiful, too brainy, too confident, too strong, too perfect.) But this is a complete movie, …

Paul Schrader’s 2017 film First Reformed gave us a solitary man who is keeping a journal; who deals with an intense and intimate crisis before learning that the real enemy is larger, more powerful, and less personal; and who just might find salvation via a compassionate woman. Then, 2021’s The …

Exasperating obstacle course of mistaken identity, incredible coincidence, and Ugly Americanism (albeit in a blissfully pretty package: Sigourney Weaver). An enthusiasm for archaeology at any rate affords a new source of cuteness for Gerard Depardieu -- though an old one, of course, for Cary Grant. Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the radio …

Built like a bullet, yet with his mind a cage of wormy lust, greed, and bigotry, cop Dave Brown (Woody Harrelson) is far below the LAPD’s finest. Oren Moverman directed as if fiercely merging Colors and Bad Lieutenant, while chief writer James Ellroy overplays his slumming zeal for lowlife crud. …

Supernatural debunkers (Sigourney Weaver and Cillian Murphy) investigate a blind psychic (Robert De Niro) who has recently come out of a long retirement. Written and directed by Rodrigo Cortés.

The production banner over Gary Winick's little coming-of-age comedy -- Indigent (or InDigEnt), acronym for Independent Digital Entertainment -- is a commendable example of truth-in-labelling. Poor for sure. Needy indeed. An anemic, myopic image that gets ever blurrier with every inch of distance from the camera, and ever pastier with …

Charmingly sincere fairy tale of forgiveness, revolving around a kingdom known for its soup, the dark days that befall it, and its truthful, fearless, chivalrous deliverer, an undersized mouse with oversized ears and ego. A magnificent cast if you could see them, if, that is, they weren’t hidden behind stiff …

Anti-terrorist exploitation to do with an apparent assassination of the U.S. President on Spanish soil on the eve of a peace accord, but an actual assassination of his look-alike: “Sir, we’ve used doubles since Reagan,” a page out of Saddam Hussein’s playbook, and the terrorists know that playbook backwards and …

Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan painted himself into a corner with The Sixth Sense, and has climbed the walls ever since: Unbreakable, Signs, and now this. His outsized initial success seems to have given him an inflated sense of self-importance, an inflamed sense of mission: not simply to top the sensationalism …

Relentlessly sentimental science fiction about a cute anthropomorphized “male” robot — a rattletrap contraption of binoculars atop tank treads — programmed to pick up garbage on an evacuated Earth in the 28th Century (his name is an acronym of Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth-Class), all alone on the planet but …

Picture this: it's to be a sort of New York fairy tale about an ambitious, industrious, competent, loyal, and trusting secretary outrunning all the rats in the rat race, and the first shot is an aerial one of the face of Lady Liberty. Might you just as well give up …

The old story of the objective reporter learning to get involved. In this particular telling, the setting is Indonesia, 1965, on the eve of Sukarno's showdown with the Communists. The telling itself is uncommonly muddy: i.e., hard to make out, easy to get stuck in and spin your wheels in. …

Old scores, old high-school scores, resurface before a big wedding, leading to old, old gags: the plumbing mishap, the nature disaster, spilled food, purposely dumped food. A plucky cast — Kristen Bell, Jamie Lee Curtis, Sigourney Weaver, Odette Yustman, Betty White — goes down fighting, but goes down hard. Directed …