A jump-ball for the soul of a high-school hoopster: bright prospects on one side, dark influences on the other. Stupefyingly unimaginative and amateurishly directed (Jeff Pollack), but Leon -- just Leon, no last name -- makes a good impression as the Strong Silent Type. With Duane Martin, Tupac Shakur, Marlon …
Juvenile game of Good vs. Evil (as Milton Bradley might put it: Ages 6 to 10), set in a Medieval fantasyland populated by mages and commoners, a sulky teenage empress, a giant red-bearded "dwarf," a full-grown pointy-eared "elf," a British-accented mock-Shakespearean bad guy (Jeremy Irons, destroying any last shred of …
Marlon Wayans co-writes, co-produces, and stars in this Fifty Shades of Grey parody directed by Michael Tiddes. Expect the outrageous, as usual.
Like Transformers, this enterprise — this franchise — has put the merchandising first, succeeding as opposed to preceding a line of toys. (Trademark Hasbro.) The movie, opening deflatingly in 17th-century France before advancing to a science-fictional “not too distant future,” is a live-action cartoon from the maker of The Mummy …
More haunted hijinx from Marlon Wayans & Co.
The Coen brothers' first-ever "unoriginal" work: a remake of a mid-Fifties British caper comedy by the underappreciated Alexander Mackendrick. In mitigation, the brothers throughout their careers have been so partial to the pastiche -- the neo-noir Blood Simple, the imitation-Hammett Miller's Crossing, the imitation-Cain The Man Who Wasn't There, the …
The poster art for On the Rocks bears more than a passing resemblance to a moment from Sofia Coppola and Bill Murray’s hit from yesteryear, Lost in Translation. Surely they weren’t trying for a repeat May/December romance this time between Murray and Rashida Jones? Initial relief (the two play father …
A grim-and-grimmer urban horror story, from a novel by Hubert Selby, Jr., about four drug dependents en route (in a final flurry of cross-cutting) to neatly synchronized rack and ruin. The downward spiral of your dime-a-dozen junkie needs more than new extremes of physical disgustingness -- the gangrene, the two-way …
Airplane-style, Naked Gun-style, spoof of slasher films, which is to say that it's as unparticular about its targets as about its aim. Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer and their respective sequels are the main targets, and The Blair Witch Project, The Matrix, The Usual Suspects, Amistad, …
Disney-manufactured synthetic sports thrills, with a goaltending (and intentional-fouling) ghost to assist the Washington Huskies on the road to the Final Four. The team makes it all the way to the championship game before its members become bothered by the fact that they are "cheating." In the conscience department, it's …
Wanting to escape the memories of their dead son, a couple moves from the big city to a remote New England farmhouse. Using the kid’s ghost-in-tow as his lead-in to horror, writer-director Ted Geoghegan directly proceeds to drop as unambitious a haunted house movie as any you’ll find. One jolt: …