Pretty flimsy even for a comic book. The gotta-have-a-gimmick superhero has been blinded in a childhood run-in with some biohazardous substance (in a quarter-hour prologue), and his handicap causes him to develop his remaining senses to the point where he can swing around the skyscrapers like Spider-Man, dodge projectiles of …
An event for women, to help them not only live their life, but also love their life.
One thing to be said for a Wes Anderson film, and it's no small thing, is that it bears an individual stamp. A stamp as flat as a postage stamp, as emphatic as a rubber stamp. (Whap, whap.) A well-known commodity after Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tennenbaums, The Life …
Inflammatory cop drama set against a backdrop of the well-documented racism in the LAPD. It begins, indelicately enough, with the infamous Rodney King tape, and the bulk of the action takes place while awaiting the verdict in the Simi Valley trial of the arresting officers. (The conclusion of the action …
Dark, without a doubt, and dank, and steamy, and simultaneously futuristic and antiquated, and currently in the grip of pasty aliens who can reshape reality at will. (At the will of the scriptwriters, that is, not at their own.) An impressive production to a certain degree; an oppressive one to …
Tolkien-esque fantasy, designed by British illustrator Brian Froud, co-directed by Jim Henson (creator of the Muppets) and Frank Oz (voice of Miss Piggy, Yoda, et al.), and enacted by a new breed of puppet for which there is as yet no convenient label. The major designing effort has gone toward …
Tolkien-esque fantasy, designed by British illustrator Brian Froud, co-directed by Jim Henson (creator of the Muppets) and Frank Oz (voice of Miss Piggy, Yoda, et al.), and enacted by a new breed of puppet for which there is as yet no convenient label. The major designing effort has gone toward …
Illuminating documentary, shot in suitably sooty black-and-white, about homeless squatters in a New York subway tunnel. (Shades of the cannibalistic Undergrounders in the cult British horror film, Raw Meat, a/k/a Death Line.) The sense of subterranean space and spatial relationships is a bit vague, but the camera is well at …
Pretty girls go into a creepy old house, complete with a creepy old lady, dead flowers in the garden, a spooky cat, and visions of a young girl in an old-fashioned nightdress. Who needs English?
Two American businessmen (Emile Hirsch, Max Minghella) meet two nifty girls (Olivia Thirlby, Rachael Taylor) in a Moscow dance bar. Then the aliens arrive, looking like falling Christmas décor as they land but invisible as they track and kill. Chris Gorak’s generic film falls into clichés and isn’t very scary, …
A cup of weak tea indeed from director Joe Wright, one that sorely needs a shot of something stronger to brace it for the unenviable task of manufacturing drama out of the question of whether Prime Minister Winston Churchill will take Britain into war with Germany or sit down for …
Another teen dystopia franchise first chapter, notable chiefly for its willingness to be honest — even “good” teens can and will do very bad things when scared or upset or just full of adolescent emotion. No, dude, it’s not romantic when you use your telekinetic powers to drag a girl …
Several Chekhov stories blended together, with most of the delicacy that that name stands for ruthlessly expunged: aristocrats and bureaucrats of Eisensteinian exaggeration, musical peasants, a lovers' embrace in a blizzard of chicken feathers. Marcello Mastroianni, as a skirt-chaser in genuine love, behaves in that unbuttoned manner he tends to …
Stephen King's Jekyll-and-Hyde variation is as convoluted and garbled as we have come to expect. A college Lit. professor and writer of "serious fiction" is threatened with the exposure of his pulp-novelist pseudonym. Why on earth — given the heritage of Kenneth Fearing, Nicholas Blake, Michael Innes, et al. — …