One more failed attempt to make an exciting movie about hacking. (The real-life Sony debacle was more entertaining and even dramatic, because it was all about people. Here, it's all about more mundane things. Much more mundane.) Chris Hemsworth (Thor!) plays the handsome hunk who must be retrieved from prison …
Faithful re-enactment of a 1993 incident in Somalia: the eighteen-hour urban firefight that ensues when an intended neat, clean, in-and-out raid into the heart of Mogadishu (colloquially called "the Mogue," or just "Mogue") goes bad. It delivers a mixed experience, even, you might say, a mixed message: harrowing yet spectacular …
Two determined parents venture into an unfamiliar world to rescue their teenage daughter from the grip of a powerful and ruthless pimp. Fueled by love and a fierce sense of justice, they must navigate a network of deceit and betrayals, relying on their own cunning, strength, and courage to outsmart …
Must be without competition the shortest twenty-million-dollar movie ever made (clocked at well under ninety minutes, minus the credits), which is but one crude measure of how much more money than imagination went into this scandalously derivative and down-at-the-heels sci-fi epic. The bulk of its debt is payable to Star …
The film goes behind-the-scenes of the team capturing the first-ever image of a black hole and Stephen Hawking's final publication.
Spike Lee opens with the money shot from Gone With the Wind (“a romance set in Auschwitz”), then jumps forward a few decades to a time where a black police officer was actually able to infiltrate the KKK. (Guys who wear pointy hoods don’t generally do so in order to …
Blacklight — As he sees it, undercover agent Travis Block’s (Liam Neeson) calling is an ability to save the souls of good FBI operatives who have temporarily crossed over to the dark side. After busting up a gang of Johnny Rebs, Block turns his attention to Dusty Crane (Taylor John …
Self-consciously but straight-facedly campy thriller (dug up from the heyday of psychedelia -- and the color is garishly magnificent) about the duel of wits between "Japan's number one detective" and a female master criminal who'll stop at nothing to get hold of a South African diamond called Star of Egypt. …
Johnny Depp disappears into the role of real-life gangster Whitey Bulger — receding hairline and icy blue eyes abetted by vocal fry and a sour sneer compounded from equal parts rodent and snake. But the real story here is FBI agent John Connolly (a beefy Joel Edgerton), who gets the …
Kama Ginkas’ dramatization of Chekhov’s story for The Moscow Young Generation Theater.
High-tech action film centered around a sportscar prototype -- called the Black Moon, shaped like an axe blade -- which approaches the realm of the futuristic. ("It's-alike-a science feection, no? A jet-a car!" enthuses an Italian auto manufacturer.) The international car-theft ring that steals the prototype, with headquarters in a …
A group of evangelistic nuns fail to make a go of it in a remote Himalayan convent, one of them driven quite mad by lust for an Englishman in shorts. That bit is particularly over-the-moon, and a good bit of the rest of it is at least near-the-brink. But the …
Langston Hughes wrote a play called Black Nativity which told the story of Jesus' birth using an all-black cast. Now Kasi Lemmons has written and directed this film, which is somehow based on Hughes play even though Langston himself is a character. The magic of movies.