Punishingly dull biopic on history's most fabled aviatrix, Amelia Earhart (portrayed by Hilary Swank, with traces of Katharine Hepburn rather than of Kansas wheatfields in her speech), her final flight endlessly interrupted by how-she-got-there flashbacks. The only suspense is in whether the film is going to offer an ending or …
Ewan McGregor's directorial debut (he also stars) takes on nothing less than the fragile impermanence of the American Dream — dreams, after all, being things up from which you must ultimately wake — even going so far as to imply that the seeds of its destruction are sown even as …
Although the Dan Brown novel was written before The Da Vinci Code, the screen adaptation of it (directed again by Ron Howard) takes care to situate itself afterwards with a reference or two to the returning hero’s “recent involvement with, shall we say, Church mysteries” and his consequent strained relations …
This year’s entry in the dysfunctional family holiday sweepstakes is a heaping plate of fried green magnolias. The Weston clan and company gather in Tulsa to mourn the suicide of the family patriarch and wind up wishing that their beastly, cancer-riddled mother (Meryl Streep) could trade places with him. John …
When writer-director Mike Mills isn’t flashing oodles of perky technique and “stylish” doodads (drawings, meet-cutes, old news clips, vintage music), his talented cast inserts human value and charm into this tale of a nice, lonely guy (Ewan McGregor) who lost his suddenly gay, then dead dad (Christopher Plummer) and finds …
Big bore. Tim Burton, to inhibit erosion of his "fan base," needed to bounce back in a big way from the commercial conservatism of Planet of the Apes, and in Daniel Wallace's slender novel he has found a fund of peculiarity: the sententious and sentimental memoirs of an Alabama fabulist, …
Faithful re-enactment of a 1993 incident in Somalia: the eighteen-hour urban firefight that ensues when an intended neat, clean, in-and-out raid into the heart of Mogadishu (colloquially called "the Mogue," or just "Mogue") goes bad. It delivers a mixed experience, even, you might say, a mixed message: harrowing yet spectacular …
The hundred-year-old extracurricular brass band of Grimley Colliery marches proudly toward "Albert Bloody Hall" on the competitive circuit, even as the mine itself faces closure. The filmmakers are too disheartened by Thatcherism to do an out-and-out comedy in the old Ealing Studios style, but their indomitable-human-spirit sentiments prevent a complete …
With this, Woody Allen looks like he has overextended his stay in England. The refreshment is gone. Less engrossing than Match Point, less engaging than Scoop, it spins a yarn of working-class brothers (Ewan McGregor, Colin Farrell, working their thespian tails off) who, in exchange for financial favors from a …
After decades of dormancy — and wanting very much to reunite with his childhood pal — Winnie the Pooh finally figures out behind which tree door stands his all-grown-up childhood pal, Christopher Robin (Ewan McGregor, proving that he has what it takes to be live-action Disney’s newest alternative to Dean …
Shaky suspense film premised on a mousy accountant tumbling into an exclusive Manhattan sex club, anonymous one-nighters with uniformly beautiful career women: “It’s intimacy without intricacy.” Shakier as it goes. With Ewan McGregor, Hugh Jackman, Michelle Williams, Natasha Henstridge, and Charlotte Rampling; directed by Marcel Langenegger.
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 …
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 …
The mating dance of a trailblazing, best-selling feminist author and a men's-magazine hedonist revives the Rock Hudson and Doris Day series of bedroom comedies, right down to the re-creation of the original period (1962) and the presence on screen of Tony Randall (although David Hyde Pierce takes the role that …
The strange, twisted, incomprehensible bond between a female serial killer (who had traumatically lost her father) and a high-tech detective (who had traumatically lost his daughter). Gimmicky thriller -- souvenir snow globes to mark every change of scene, ghostly visitations from the vanished daughter, guardian-angel symbols, computer graphics galore -- …