An “update” to the ’80s television series, this time involving two high school polarities (the dumb jock and the smart geek) who are recruited for an undercover assignment to pose as high school students and infiltrate the supplier of a new “super drug.” The film is a pinball machine: loud, …
Documentary-style drama about the real-life, high-risk team of photojournalists (two Pulitzers amongst them) working in the final days of Apartheid South Africa. There is a good deal of romanticizing over the plight of the photographer, at least in his most guerilla form, and the film raises some ethical questions regarding …
Boogeyman drivel from director Martin Guigui about a mortician (Dennis Quaid) who likes to stock his caskets with his kills. The script aims for juvenile banality and falls short of even that mark, and the acting is a roundup of static delivery and clichéd expressions. But the greatest problem is …
Alejandro González Iñárritu attends his film with such care and detail that, despite the squalor of the environment, we are left with an undeniable aesthetic. Javier Bardem, as the protagonist, accomplishes much with little, revealing a detached worry and guilt. While Iñárritu may amble too far with his plot, he …
A cobblestone tale of one of the world’s most caustic times: England, circa 1348. The filmmaking is undeniably modern: shaky, handheld camerawork, jump-cut editing, stuttering slow motion. The connection to the 14th-century epidemic is rather derivative. Director Christopher Smith seems more concerned with making a bloody mess of things. At …
An indie documentary about the underground indie-film craze in New York City in the late ’70s — sort of a low-budget SparkNote to the big bang of Super 8. The archive footage is expectedly atrocious, but it does garner some nostalgia for the time — the outlaw attitude, the financially …
A raunchy comedy with integrity from star and cowriter Kristen Wiig. The movie is unquestionably from a female perspective, a quality that is pervasive but never exclusive. Wiig plays Annie, a heart-ravaged, recession-broken middle-ager struggling to maintain an emotional parallel with her best friend whose life is on the up-and-up. …
Rowan Joffe wrote and directed this adaptation of the Graham Greene novel about warring mobster gangs in England, circa 1964. The crime element is merely backdrop to the film’s real interest, a dysfunctional love story between a psychotic young mob boss and a sheltered waitress, desperate to be his moll. …
Christina Aguilera plays Ali, a cute-as-pie Iowa waitress with aspirations of Sunset Strip stardom. She finds herself as part of the act in a Los Angeles club, catering to the tastes of the Moulin Rouge, until the club’s owner, Cher, hears her sing. Aguilera does not so much steal the …
Director Xavier Durringer imagines the political ascent of French president Nicolas Sarkozy. Denis Podalydès looks the part of the underdog, a slouchy duck of a man who likes to protrude his bottom lip. He sustains interest as Sarkozy, but it is Florence Pernel as his wife and top advisor who …
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 …
Sacha Baron Cohen plays “Admiral-General” Aladeen, the brutal dictator of a fictional Middle Eastern country who finds himself stranded in Manhattan after a case of mistaken identity. From the outset, much of the humor relies on sequences of shtick that outlast their wit. Behind the guise of political satire, the …
The daily goings-on of an upper middle class family are presented for your watercooler enjoyment. Liev Schreiber and Helen Hunt, facing marital ennui, must deal with the latter’s ailing father. Brian Dennehy is credible in the part, cursing out his doldrums with an end-of-the-line kind of resignation. Photographed in a …
Dan Rush directs his padded adaptation of Raymond Carver’s short story, Why Don’t You Dance? Will Ferrell, as the central character, is a bit of an obstacle. He plays an upper-middle-class alcoholic whose wife leaves him on the same day that he loses his job. He returns home to find …