Because you can't possibly get enough of zombies, and so you want to know how it all began: a documentary that looks back at the plucky bunch of unlikely pioneers behind George Romero's Night of the Living Dead.
Is director Gabriela Cowperthwaite's documentary an indictment of SeaWorld's use of killer whales as modern-day circus lions, despite the physical and psychic toll that captivity takes on the creatures? Or is it an indictment of SeaWorld's apparent willingness to put its trainers in the water with animals it knows to …
Langston Hughes wrote a play called Black Nativity which told the story of Jesus' birth using an all-black cast. Now Kasi Lemmons has written and directed this film, which is somehow based on Hughes play even though Langston himself is a character. The magic of movies.
Rudolfo Anaya's coming-of-age story, set in 1940s New Mexico, never comes close to escaping its novelistic origins — do we really need a narrator to tell us that wise old woman Ultima "taught me to listen to the living earth and to feel complete in the mystery of its time"? …
A sleepy-eyed 15-year-old schoolgirl (Adèle Exarchopoulos) begins a torrid love affair with an older, wild-eyed artist (Léa Seydoux) that could possibly end in infidelity. As if three hours weren’t enough to tell this paper-thin story, we won’t know what happens to the couple until part two arrives. This year’s Palm …
In Annie Hall, Woody Allen wrote a zingy throwaway line ridiculing a saliva dribbling, shopping bag-schlepping lunatic who wanders screaming into a cafeteria. We mock the things we are to be. Thirty-six years (and just as many films) later finds him crafting an entire feature around a more upscale version …
Filmed version of the popular Young Adult novel about a pretty blonde orphan girl (a cherubic Sophie Nelisse) who gets taken in by poor, decent German folk just as World War II gets underway. Papa (a hunched Geoffrey Rush) hides a Jew in the basement because the Jew's father once …
A spiritless, secondhand ripoff of first rate social satire. It’s Mad Max meets Death Proof to form the basis of another bloody dumb apocalypse comedy. With Corporate Wars having reduced the planet to near-unlivable conditions, a band of grubby futuristic human hunters are hired to beat the bushes and anything …
Without benefit of intertitles or one spoken word – the spare dialogue is unintelligible – Brazilian animator Alê Abreu’s gentle fantasy, seen entirely through the coin slot eyes of a 5-year-old stick figure, speaks volumes. At first, all that’s needed to advance the simple tale of a son’s journey from …
Breathe In contains no surprises, but still gets points for its sustained mood (thwarted) and careful story mechanics. Plus, of course, the parted-lip glamour of Bright Young English Thing Felicity Jones (seen recently as the object of adulterous desire in The Invisible Woman). She plays English exchange student Sophie, the …
It's important to distinguish between your skills and your interests. Being handsome and successful and beloved is not necessarily a skill.
A young black man in a hoodie, shot and killed under questionable circumstances. A powerful politician looking for a quick economic fix that he swears favors both the rich and the poor, but definitely the rich. A secret gay love affair that could end a man's career. Another story ripped …