Namely Chicago, as of 1957, and as seen through the eyes of an Indiana country boy. The setting is permeated with the romance of the wild side -- hotels, bars, strip clubs, gyms, and the literal and figurative tumble of the dice -- and only slightly demystified by the rough-grained …
The all-purpose title tells little about a slender, strenuous comic caper adapted from a novel by Dave Barry: a lengthy eighty-odd minutes. (Its release was postponed after the attacks of September 11, 2001, owing to worries over the black-market nuclear bomb smuggled aboard a jetliner: heh-heh.) The opportunities are spread …
Big surprise is that John Cassavetes would want to direct so conventional a Hollywood project: a reunion of the stars of The In-Laws, Peter Falk and Alan Arkin, with pretty much the same personas, but this time in a comic twist on Double Indemnity (with a dash of Les Diaboliques). …
Terribly confusing action-comedy, set in and under San Francisco's Chinatown. ("You know what this is?" poses an eye-witness news reporter, not too helpfully. "This is like some radical Alice in Wonderland.") Not just the mumbo-jumbo about Chinese black magic, about the Lords of Death versus the Wing Kong, about Lo …
Documentary proof that not every story needs to be a movie, The Big Uneasy performs the seemingly impossible trick of draining the passion from the story of Hurricane Katrina and the disastrous flooding of New Orleans in 2005. It’s certainly worth understanding the multiple factors that contributed to the levees’ …
John Milius's epic-scale treatment of three surfing buddies and their California Casual lifestyle is always pleasantly absurd, but its most side-splitting possibilities, in the mock-heroic mode, are not realized until the lugubriously nostalgic second half, when the three blond beachniks must face up to the problems of Aging, the Changing …
Nature tourism lamely disguised as comedy. Steve Martin, Owen Wilson, and Jack Black play fanatical birders competing to see as many feathery critters as possible in one year. They run around the country, making cute faces between bird views, and classy old actors (Anjelica Huston, Brian Dennehy, Dianne Wiest) are …
Vroom-vroom-vroom-VROOOOM! Noisy nonsense about mostly black motorcycle clubs that get together for ritualized drag races ("We got a strict code about hustling") or else, on one occasion, for a charity bike-wash to raise money for schoolbooks. There are no real bad guys, and only one dead guy. (But don't try …
At the outside of Jeff Nichols’ gorgeous and grungy look back on the history of the Vandals motorcycle club, we are informed that it is based on The Bikeriders, a book by photojournalist Danny Lyon, based on his interviews with the club’s members — and, significantly, their women — between …
Not Michael Bay’s latest Transformers installment, but Swedish documentarian Fredrik Gertten’s heartfelt plea for drivers to share the road with cyclists — or, better yet, do away with oil-burning autos altogether. From São Paulo and Toronto to Los Angeles and the ultimate bicycle-friendly city, Copenhagen, Gertten takes us to the …
The United Arab Emirates finally got around to discovering CG animation and after sitting on the shelf since 2015, Bilal is ready for the world to take notice. On the plus side, the background layouts are exquisite, as are the strikingly detailed long shots and sleek editing composed for movement. …