A sleepy-eyed 15-year-old schoolgirl (Adèle Exarchopoulos) begins a torrid love affair with an older, wild-eyed artist (Léa Seydoux) that could possibly end in infidelity. As if three hours weren’t enough to tell this paper-thin story, we won’t know what happens to the couple until part two arrives. This year’s Palm …
In Annie Hall, Woody Allen wrote a zingy throwaway line ridiculing a saliva dribbling, shopping bag-schlepping lunatic who wanders screaming into a cafeteria. We mock the things we are to be. Thirty-six years (and just as many films) later finds him crafting an entire feature around a more upscale version …
Tell a lie and you will die, decline a dare and the audience you will scare! Wanna bet? Expect another exercise in routine supernatural shocks, set in Mexico over spring break — the sole point of which is to gather together and systematically pick off attractive coeds. It’s one thing …
It’s decision time: should Bobbi Jene stay in Tel Aviv or part company with the dance troupe that’s been her professional home for a third of her life? If only the 30-year-old, Iowa-born star of the Batsheva dance group had her career as neatly in order as her romantic life! …
Images of Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) and Bee (Maria Bakalova) tonguing in tight close-up soon give chase to a “Hurricane Party” where our nascent lovers are greeted by bodies suspended in a swimming pool like grapes in Jell-O. In fact, Jasper “Lighting By Glowstick” Wolf’s cinematography is the most ferocious aspect …
Substantive biopic, or little silhouette of a docudrama sporting performances by a Queen tribute band? As frontman Freddie Mercury, Rami Malek’s ability to outdistance the Nutty Professor bucks and Planet of the Apes shag is a testament to his charisma. Alas, almost from the start the project seemed ill-omened. It’s …
Substantive biopic, or little silhouette of a docudrama sporting performances by a Queen tribute band? As frontman Freddie Mercury, Rami Malek’s ability to outdistance the Nutty Professor bucks and Planet of the Apes shag is a testament to his charisma. Alas, almost from the start the project seemed ill-omened. It’s …
Before the credits fade, Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) is reporting on Ivana Trump’s allegations of rape against her husband. So much for fair and balanced coverage — which in the case of Trump-bashing, wouldn’t be bad. But like Roger Ailes (John Lithgow), the lecherous architect of the cable news channel …
Mention her name, and anyone who has seen Blazing Saddles will smile and say, “That’s Hedley!” But if it was Mel Brooks who brought the actress eternal fame and instant recognition, Bombshell is out to set the record straight. At 18, actress Hedy Lamarr grabbed headlines when she appeared nude …
The clip from director Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman that opens his La Bonne Année (Happy New Year) lasts long enough to remind viewers of the visual gimcrackery that contributed to the former’s success. The film is being screened for a captive audience: a group of convicts, among …
Each generation has a defining high school basketball picture to call its own (One on One, Love and Basketball, Above the Rim, etc.). The dialogue may coarsen, the off-court violence intensify, and the ethnicity of its lead may fluctuate over time, but the events outlined in the narrative basically remain …
The doctored picture that kicks things off — four badly photoshopped heads to represent 40 years of friendship — sets a tone of fierce laziness for an impotent sex comedy about four yentas committing to reading the 50 Shades trilogy. Our lettered leading ladies — Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Mary …
Hang a CLOSED sign in the window: it’s another film with a strong female character that’s cushioned in the safety and comfort of the recent past. Were writer/director Isabel Coixet up for a challenge, she would have fashioned a film about a feminist trying to keep a brick and mortar …
Like its predecessor, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is an unremitting wellspring of laughs, many refreshingly disgraceful. As with everything Cohen signs his name to, the artist’s mind may be in the gutter, but his moral compass generally points due north. Throwaway gags brought gales of giggles — the Johnny the Monkey/lipstick …
Director Janus Metz’ clash of the tennis titans presents its flaws early: amped grandeur (“every match is a life in miniature”), an overbearing soundtrack, too much made of its heroes’ interior lives while too little is revealed about their actual gameplay, and a tendency to tell what it could just …