It’s a case of “different message, same actor” as Lucas Hedges trades in one important theme for another and goes from a boy erased to a beautiful boy addict. Mom (Julia Roberts) returns from church on Christmas Eve to find Ben (Hedges), her semi-rehabbed son, anxiously vaping on the front …
Intolerably twee romance that fudges the border between madness and daffiness. A clinical nutcase (breakfast of milk, peanut butter, Cap'n Crunch in the blender) "wins" a semiliterate, Chaplin-and-Keaton-emulating clown during a poker game, and discovers in him a true soulmate (cheese sandwiches grilled by clothes iron, potatoes mashed by tennis …
Fiery display of rhetoric: persecutors of gays are Nazis. Literally, in this case. A frenetic opening-up and pushing-around of the Martin Sherman stage play about the end of the free-and-easy decadence of Berlin between the wars, the S.S. crackdown on "deviants," and the flowering relationship of two prisoners in Dachau. …
Computer-animated comic-book transcription of the unloved epic poem of the 8th Century. Director Robert Zemeckis goes even further with the motion-capture technique of The Polar Express, staking out the borderland between live action and cartoon, and throwing in 3-D to boot. Ray Winstone, voicing the dragon-slaying hero, has been prettified …
Jack Black is the life-based but rather cartoonish Bernie, a sweet, dapper, fussy (read: gay) undertaker in Carthage, Texas. He is an angel disguised as an oddball, loved by all, even (for a time) the mean widow Marjorie (Shirley MacLaine). Director Richard Linklater provides a cozy jacket of style, is …
Trick photography. First, because it's the story of a man who photographed his tricks: Bert Stern, lenser, lover, lothario. The man is undeniably gifted, and apparently, undeniable in other ways as well — even in his eighties, he casts a spell over a trio of sweetish, youngish things (two of …
Besides the prefix and suffix of its title, this shares with Beloved the spectacle of Thandie Newton peeing on her own feet, puking, and behaving generally as if possessed by Linda Blair. Her character is that of a refugee from an African dictatorship, now a maid in Italy. Her master, …
Joshua Caldwell directs the story of a Bieber-style popstar who just wants a taste of the normal life.
The Herdman kids are absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world. But this Christmas, they’re taking over their local church Pageant – and they just might unwittingly teach a shocked community the true meaning of Christmas.
The Herdman kids are absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world. But this Christmas, they’re taking over their local church Pageant – and they just might unwittingly teach a shocked community the true meaning of Christmas.
Or, Grand Hotel meets Downton Abbey in the old Merchant & Ivory curry kitchen. An aging bunch of swell Brits (though Penelope Wilton is a sour pickle) gather at a pretty, decaying hotel in Udaipur, India, for sunset lessons in living. It is very tidy and quaintly picturesque but humanly …