A documentary look inside the world of cancer treatment, one that seeks to offer "a compelling critique of the influence of medical monopolies, the power of pharmaceutical companies, and government agencies."
You needn't reach for the proverbial fine-toothed comb to locate snags. The scriptwriter, like a broken-thumbed piano player, hits nearly as many false notes as true, and there is a surfeit of misfit romanticism spread over the tarnished central trio and their -- or actually only one's -- quest to …
New-fashioned swashbuckler: more an amusement-park attraction than a tale of adventure; nearer Vegas's Treasure Island than Stevenson's. Lots of spectacular stunts, explosions, chases, and lots of slow-motion to assist your appreciation of them; not lots of charm, though, or spirit. Director Renny Harlin sees to it that his wife, Geena …
Post-apocalypse science fiction, or post-MTV anyway, with the world overrun by fugitives from a Billy Idol video. Brutal action, and plenty of it; frugal but functional ruins and rubble; laughably laconic dialogue; a reverberantly basso profundo villain, no less laughable; and a terrier-tense hero, who has to be bailed out …
Jean-Paul Rappeneau's rendition of the Edmond Rostand play is a perfectly acceptable version of the piece for either someone who has never seen a production of it before or else someone who can't get enough of it. But the interest of the thing is infinitely more literary than cinematic. The …
“Edgy” indie comedy by the brothers Jay and Mark Duplass (“mumblecore” movers and shakers, makers of Baghead among others), the premise of which would be just as easy to imagine as a mainstream Will Ferrell vehicle: an oafish divorced lonelyheart (“I’m like Shrek”) thinks he may have found a new …
D-minus. The Pee-Wee pucksters, having overcome the odds to win the local championship, are ready to take on the world and overcome steeper odds, at the Junior Goodwill Games in L.A. The villain: Iceland. Iceland? Yes, Iceland. (A bold move, inviting protests from the Icelander Anti-Defamation League and virtually writing …
An expatriate Irish playwright hashes things over with the ghost of his father -- literally, and in stiltedly literary language: "You spent your life sitting on brambles, and wouldn't move for fear someone would take your seat," etc. He also gets to have a generation-gap spat with "himself" -- though …
There's an intriguing idea here, and director Gary David Goldberg never gets anywhere near it. The idea is identified (after apparently one diagnostic session with a psychiatrist) as "successful schizophrenia." A seventy-eight-year-old retiree, almost paralyzed by age and unable to make the least little move without the sharp command of …
Hard to judge what’s more exasperating, the undependable divorced dad of two visiting sons or the shaky camera and sandpapery image. Ronald Bronstein is at least very convincing as the constant fuck-up. With Sage Ranaldo, Frey Ranaldo, Eleanore Hendricks, and Abel Ferrara; written and directed by Josh and Benny Safdie.
Dirk Bogarde's return to the screen after a twelve-year absence -- a happy event in itself, and it injects just that degree of initial interest and lingering excitement lacking in the average Bertrand Tavernier movie. Our first sight of him hardly constitutes a grand re-entrance: flat on his back in …
Can a movie with this title possibly have a sense of humor? Well, not much of a one: but not everyone involved can be kept totally in line, and there are flashes of humorousness -- or at least humannness -- from Beau Bridges, Tess Harper, Patrika Darbo, and Molly McClure …
Adding to an already varied and impressive documentary portfolio which ranges from the castles along the Loire River to Cuba to the Vietnam War to the Black Panthers, Agnes Varda tries her hand here at a "neighborhood movie" (wider in scope than a "home movie," but narrower than her other …
Vera Chytilova's unbridled experiment in color, collage, cartoonish sound effects, and changeable image quality. For all the sensory excitements, in this story of small-scale devastations committed by two amoral girlfriends (in a world, we are reminded, prone to devastations on a mass scale), it should not escape notice that the …