Christopher Guest's directorial debut, a corruption-of-innocence comedy solipsistically set in Hollywood. The opening awards ceremony, with clips from four nominated student productions at the National [sic] Film Institute, puts him back comfortably in the parody mode of This Is Spinal Tap, which he co-wrote and starred in. (The intermittent fantasy …
Marching through World War II under the command of Samuel Fuller and in the company of a charmed infantry unit that survives North Africa, Sicily, Normandy, Belgium, and Czechoslovakia, and somehow missed out on the mop-up operation in the Pacific. (Robert Carradine, chomping on an unending cigar and narrating the …
Scott Marks is back!
Three firefighters must save New Orleans from a gigantic shark. Can New Orleans survive? Directed by Tommy Wiseau, starring Greg Sestero, Isaiah LaBorde, and Tommy Wiseau.
The term “I don’t understand” is spoken numerous times throughout the film. That’s not counting audience members. Come equipped with a sophisticated understanding of the banking collapse of the mid-2000s and you’ll be hanging on every word. For those who invest in cinema and wouldn’t know a housing bubble from …
Another TV-safe comedy from Michael Showalter.
Another TV-safe comedy from Michael Showalter, this time with ten additional minutes.
The Bogart-Bacall team's playful, pattycake exchanges are quite dated now, although at times still quite salacious, and the adaptation of the labyrinthine Raymond Chandler mystery novel is not as baffling as it is reputed to be. However, there is also a grand confidence in the allure of film noir atmospheric …
Although relocated in modern-day England, this stays closer to the letter of the Raymond Chandler original than Howard Hawks's 1946 version did. And yet, hastening through the labyrinthine plot in well under two hours, it turns brusque and unfeeling. Not all is a loss, though. There's a nice counterpoint effect …
Cut-rate caper film (both film and caper are cut-rate) about a transparent scam to separate a bum-kneed third baseman from his $130,000 insurance settlement. If this devout Catholic ("Forgive me, Lord, but I've indulged my wife in pursuit of carnal fulfillment -- again") were disposed to fund the church renovations …
In burying her mother, small town pharmacist and 40-year-old spinster Ave Maria Mulligan (Ashley Judd), unearths a scandalous family secret. The brief documentary history of the titular Virginia town that opens novelist and first-time director Adriana Trigiani’s undoubting romantic comedy suggested something more than another serving of Fried Green Magnolias. …
Overeager-to-please comedy about a gay Glaswegian hairdresser (Craig Ferguson) who travels to L.A. to take part in the annual Platinum Scissors competition. The "mockumentary" format permits the movie literally to make faces at the camera. With Frances Fisher, David Rasche, and Mary McCormack; directed by Kevin Allen.
Pee-wee Herman's second feature film, a sodden misfire. What went wrong? He's a gentleman farmer this time (still with his white loafers, red bowtie, etc.), and an "inventor" after the fashion of George Washington Carver ("the father of the peanut"), who plays host to a travelling circus and especially to …