From South Africa, the Oscar-winner for Best Foreign Film, 2005. That the simultaneous Oscar for the best nonforeign film went to Crash tells you pretty much all you need to know about the legitimacy of that honor. Writer and director Gavin Hood, adapting a novel by Athol Fugard, demonstrates conclusively …
Simple-minded, fast-talking exposé of the sports-betting racket, a $200-billion-a-year business, so we're informed. Al Pacino, as the operator of a 900-number tout service, is encouraged in his worst excesses; and Matthew McConaughey, as a disabled quarterback who can really pick 'em, is Pacino's disciple in more than one way: "He …
Cheap Korean knockoff of James Bond (complete with John Barry-esque whooping horns), although no Bond villain ever had such a soft spot for his sister, and 007 never had such empathy with one. Cultural differences, possibly, but the ineptitude does not encourage bridge-building. With Jung-jae Lee, Dong-kun Jang, Mi-yeon Lee, …
Warm, moist relationship thing about a battered woman who, with her eleven-year-old daughter in tow, seeks sanctuary on the Wyoming ranch of her unwelcoming former father-in-law and his crippled old ranchhand. Almost as formulaic as a Lifetime Network movie, right down to the relentless hothead boyfriend, the alternative hunky lawman, …
Said anger belongs primarily to the mother of four daughters ranging in age from high school to college senior, and secondarily to the four daughters, after the husband and father absconds with his Swedish secretary. The mother takes solace first from a bottle of vodka (three bottles per shopping trip), …
British-accented Disney computer cartoon, concerned with the role of carrier pigeons in World War II, a factual basis abnormal for computer cartoons. It assumes a degree of grounding in the history, and the cinema, of the Battle of Britain and the French Resistance. In other words, parents and grandparents may …
A cold-blooded Mossad assassin, under the guise of an Israeli tour guide, cozies up to the two adult grandchildren of an ancient Nazi still at large. Shaken but not stirred by the recent suicide of his wife, he is not happy with his assignment, especially once he learns that the …
The same line, that would be, as the previous year's Ray, a musical biopic on a recently fallen giant of popular song, C&W; instead of R&B;, Johnny Cash instead of Ray Charles, two years dead instead of mere months, but the same backstage tale of early poverty and tragedy, meteoric …
Nick Park's claymation creations -- the crackpot inventor who's "crackers about cheese" and his silent, watchful, wary, undyingly loyal yet healthily skeptical pet pooch -- take their first feature-length excursion, after a nine-year absence from the screen. The just shy of an hour-and-a-half running time is as long as their …
Nick Park's claymation creations -- the crackpot inventor who's "crackers about cheese" and his silent, watchful, wary, undyingly loyal yet healthily skeptical pet pooch -- take their first feature-length excursion, after a nine-year absence from the screen. The just shy of an hour-and-a-half running time is as long as their …
Steven Spielberg's retelling of H.G. Wells's s-f classic. The alien-invasion subgenre, as everyone now knows, blossomed during the Cold War, fertilized by fears of Communist takeover; and it's quite reasonable, quite knowledgeable, to deduce that 9/11 and its aftermath could dump some fresh manure in the field. Spielberg makes damn …
An ungifted Chicago TV personality ("My job's very easy, two hours a day, basically reading prompts"), accustomed to getting pelted on the street with fast-food items thrown by passing motorists, shoulders a number of private-life burdens: a Pulitzer Prize-winning father dying of lymphoma before the fortyish son has a chance …
It starts out as a men-behaving-badly skit about a couple of skirt-chasing cads who drop in on weddings to pick up susceptible girls and promptly drop them. After a frenetic montage of their modus operandi, however, the action settles into a perfectly conventional romantic comedy, hitting all the expected spots …