Raggedy-ass re-enactment of the making of Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, the 1971 blaxploitation blip by Melvin Van Peebles. There's certainly a behind-the-scenes story to tell (and writer-director-star Mario Van Peebles, Melvin's son, has a highly personal angle), but the slapdash dramatizations and pseudodocumentary interviews hardly help the credibility. With Rainn …
Sabir Khan directs this update of the 1990 film about a love triangle — this time at a martial arts academy instead of a brothel. In Hindi.
Nitya Mehra takes on true love with a story about a couple who find that life accelerates once they gets married. In Hindi with English subtitles.
If you want horror to be horrifying — scary, as opposed to simply tense or shocking — then it helps to shine a light into the those real-life dark corners that people would rather not investigate. The Babadook does just that, gazing steadily upon the strained and fraying mother-love that …
A/k/a The Bambino. A/k/a The Sultan of Swat. A/k/a George Herman Ruth. A from-the-beginning biographical approach (the abandonment at Saint Mary's Industrial School for Boys, the breaking of the chapel window by batted ball, etc.), plus some child-in-a-candy-store psychological analysis. John Goodman starts out too old (and too fat) for …
Quaint animal tale, freshly, ripely illustrated by prior documentarian Chris Noonan, about an orphaned porker who, taken in tow by a sheepdog, revolutionizes the business of herding when he introduces reason and politeness into it. Sometimes the cuteness gets overaggressive, but the absence of any obligatory child actor minimizes the …
Communication problems the world over. An American tourist is struck by rifle fire in Morocco, arousing erroneous worries of terrorism. An illegal-alien nanny drags along the two towheads in her care to a Mexican wedding, and runs afoul of the Border Patrol on their return. And a horny pantyless deaf-mute …
Before and after all else, this is simply a sequel, with some of the common symptoms of sequelitis: a swelling of the head, a puffing-up of the body, an overall putting-on of pounds. The critics' exaggeration of the original's modest charms can only have aggravated the situation. (The same director, …
Gabriel Axel's film, from a story by Isak Dinesen, treats of two spinsterly sisters devoted to Good Works on the Jutland Coast near the end of the last century, of how they came to have a French maid, and of how the maid, after fourteen years of gratuitous service, came …
A kind of nature documentary that looks at the human species the way another documentary might look at apes: a human-nature documentary, if you like. The French filmmaker Thomas Balmès follows four newborns from far-flung corners of the globe — a Namibian, a Mongolian, a Japanese, an American — from …
Telugu action/comedy/romance film written and directed by Maruthi. Starring Daggubati Venkatesh and Nayanthara.
The Norman Rockwell paintings displayed behind the credits may be seen as a bad omen; and the ensuing storyline, sure enough, proves to be Preston Sturges's Hail the Conquering Hero played with a solemnly straight face. Jan-Michael Vincent, a St. Loo rube with a head tapered like a brontosaurus, is …