Formula underworld drama poured into an epic template. Like Jiffy-brand waffle batter spread over an iron the size of a billiard table. "Based on a true story," it traces, in separate intertwined storylines, the converging upward paths of criminal and cop: the former (Denzel Washington) starting out as the servile …
There is much that needs forgiving in the Russo brothers’ gargantuan final chapter(?) of this particular book of the Marvel Superhero Chronicles, and not just easy stuff like the 160-minute runtime or the overabundance of overlong punch-ups (now with extra energy bolts!) No, there’s also the frequent and annoying matter …
Writer and director Karen Moncrieff, of Blue Car, goes at the title figure -- not just dead, but brutally murdered -- by way of five separate storylines, one after another, some more tangential than others, all populated by horridly stunted humans. Structurally intriguing, but grindingly grim and condescending. With Toni …
The opening text lets you know that prior to 1996, no one had died during a commercial expedition to the world's highest peak. So now you know what's coming. The first part of Baltasar Kormakur's version of the events recounted in John Krakauer's bestseller Into Thin Air serves to introduce …
The opening text lets you know that prior to 1996, no one had died during a commercial expedition to the world's highest peak. So now you know what's coming. The first part of Baltasar Kormakur's version of the events recounted in John Krakauer's bestseller Into Thin Air serves to introduce …
Gangster Squad may lack brains and heart, but it's got guts. You get to see 'em right at the outset, when a Chicago crook who dares to cross power-mad Los Angeles gangster Mickey Cohen (a guttural Sean Penn) gets ripped in half by a couple of sedans. (Then again, you …
A Richard Donner Film, but “a Steven Spielberg Presentation.” The second fellow wrote the original story and was one-third of the team of executive producers, and the finished product is chock-full of Spielbergian ingredients: skeletons, bugs, bats, boulders. There is even (in the duplicitous spirit of E.T.’s resurrection) a moment …
Remember movies? The Coen brothers do. Westerns, romances, musicals, dance extravaganzas — the works. (All of which are on gorgeous, indulgent display here.) Millions of people used to look to them for — in the words of Capitol Pictures’ Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) — “information, uplift, and yes, entertainment.” Kind …
Good creepy title, even if it was already taken (for one of the Gideon Fell mysteries by John Dickson Carr). The more fitting title, Invisible Man, was already taken, too, but the present title fits well enough when our latter-day invisible man (a cocky, smart-assy Kevin Bacon: "I am a …
A more commendable writing and directing effort from Paul Haggis (writer only on Million Dollar Baby and Flags of Our Fathers, among others) than his hokey Oscar-winner, Crash. More focussed, more concentrated, more self-contained, more consistent: an uncompromisingly mournful murder mystery, and strangled antiwar cry, about a veteran of Operation …
Caribbean treasure hunters stumble upon a Civil War-period sunken ship -- "the motherlode of all motherlodes" -- in the same vicinity as a downed drug-smuggling plane. Juvenile aquatic adventure reaches out -- or up, if you prefer -- to the MTV crowd through reggae tunes, water sports, itsy-bitsy bikinis (on …
Animator Jimmy Hayward’s live-action adaptation of a DC Comics superhero series from the Seventies comes across as an imitation spaghetti Western translated back into vernacular American, a mac-and-cheese Western, let’s call it, or a Beefaroni Western, revolving around a supernatural bounty hunter (Josh Brolin) who as a result of his …
Once you get past the temporary insanity of the premise — escaped killer takes mother and son prisoner in their own home and quickly becomes the lover she craves and the father he needs — the weird sincerity of the performances from Josh Brolin, Kate Winslet, and Gattlin Griffith may …
A final scoop of franchise gravy ten years after the last one with good critters and effects, the gee-golly style again directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. Will Smith as agent J is getting too mature for his bouncy boyishness, and Tommy Lee Jones as sullen, snarky K is looking pickled by …
Gus Van Sant’s celebratory biopic on Harvey Milk, the gay-rights activist and San Francisco City Supervisor martyred by assassination in 1978. However useful as pep rally or memorial service, the film comes up short as drama, relying altogether too much on Position Statements, Slogans, Bromides, primarily through the protagonist’s stump …