Just diverting enough, thanks in large part to the weary charm of Denzel Washington's undercover DEA agent, and the earnest charm of Mark Wahlberg's undercover Navy investigator. (The wiseassery Wahlberg uses to cover the earnestness, alas, quickly wears thin.) Thanks also to a willingness to make almost everyone at least …
The most sensational celebrity kidnapping this side of Patty Hearst become this year’s most controversial movie. J. Paul Getty (Christopher Plummer) was the richest man that ever lived. What shocked the world more than the actual kidnapping and subsequent unharboring of his grandson’s (Charlie Plummer) ear was gramp’s famously unfavorable …
Over the course of ten days and 435 miles, an unbreakable bond is forged between pro adventure racer Michael Light (Mark Wahlberg) and a scrappy street dog companion dubbed Arthur. Based on a true story, the film follows Light, desperate for one last chance to win, as he convinces a …
To hell and back with a teenage heroin hero: an uncomfortable contemporary transplant of the Jim Carroll autobiographical cult novel. (Can we look at shared needles in the Nineties without thoughts of AIDS?) It does not avoid the danger of so many junkie war stories, of sounding as much like …
Would-be big hoot. A loud, obnoxious, sophomoric action spoof cum black comedy about a Maalox-gulping hitman (Mark Wahlberg) who has a deep psychological need for everyone to like him. Lou Diamond Phillips, as his disloyal confederate, manages to work himself up into a rabid lather, but it's a waste of …
A movie that needed, that cried out, to be made: a hefty slice of heretofore unsampled cultural history, carved out of the San Fernando Valley, cradle of the porn-film industry. The precise snippet of the timeline -- sufficiently lengthy to qualify as "epic," especially at a two-and-a-half-hour running time -- …
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 …
The camera looks for extremes in this action caper about transport ship smugglers. We are jilted between oppressive closeups and panoramic helicopter shots. Mark Wahlberg plays the reformed smuggler who is compelled back into crime to protect his family. Giovanni Ribisi, as the villain, rehashes his addled weasel performance from …
Hong Kong-style action dropped like a bomb into a Sidney Lumet-style probe of NYPD politics. The result is widespread devastation. Mark Wahlberg, reunited with the director of Fear, James Foley, who has sometimes been somewhat serious, is the soft-spoken second-generation Irish cop assigned to the Chinatown beat for incendiary reasons …
Will Ferrell plays his standard issue wide-eyed naif, an amiable simp who can find the good in just about any situation, save one: the sudden reappearance of his wife’s guilt-stricken greaser ex (Mark Wahlberg), eager to reheat a dead romantic soufflé. Two moments stand out in this battle between alpha …
Mark Wahlberg recently apologized to God for appearing in Boogie Nights. Satan’s currently warming up a tier in hell for him and the funky bunch of willing participants in this crime against cinema. As in the first installment, there’s a superbly executed avalanche gag, this one involving a snow-blower consuming …
A hedged bet, marital comedy cum action thriller, with a “boring” New Jersey couple enlivening their stale marriage by getting themselves mistaken for high-stakes blackmailers. Tina Fey will never in her lifetime use up the eternal gratitude she earned for her role in the 2008 presidential campaign (the faux Palin), …
If it’s a choice between heroes drawn from real life and costume-clad warriors, give me the civvies life every time. Admittedly, the TV-friendly character exposition that opens Deepwater Horizon – Mark Wahlberg’s young daughter reveals what daddy does for a living in the form of a class paper read aloud …
If it’s a choice between heroes drawn from real life and costume-clad warriors, give me the civvies life every time. Admittedly, the TV-friendly character exposition that opens Deepwater Horizon – Mark Wahlberg’s young daughter reveals what daddy does for a living in the form of a class paper read aloud …
Martin Scorsese's career-changing turn to the overblown epic, a turn marked by Casino, would seem to be a course difficult to reverse. Kundun ... Gangs of New York ... The Aviator.... And now even a trashy light diversion, adapted from an average-length Hong Kong action film, will get dragged out …