Comedy of heartbreak and heartmend, under the imprimatur of producer Judd Apatow, but directed by newcomer Nicholas Stoller, and written by its star, Jason Segel, who envisions for himself the role of a would-be serious composer, cranking out mood music for a network crime drama when he would rather be …
Battle of the sexes update. A bout of drunken casual sex, sans condom, results in a result; and after abortion is given no more thought than it would have been given in 1957, the pair of "completely different people" set about to make it work when it makes no sense: …
If you're a fan of "Oh no she din't!" sex talk/antics and grade-A deadpanning from basketball superstar LeBron James, you're in for a treat. Otherwise, this is a deeply lazy and sentimental raunch comedy from director Judd Apatow and writer-star Amy Schumer. Basically, a marshmallow covered with bodily fluids. Lazy: …
Indian Telugu-language fantasy comedy film directed by Samuthirakani, from a screenplay by Trivikram Srinivas.
Pagan pietism, from the Disney animation studio, to do with a Northwest Indian lad who, in his anxiety to become a man, kills a bear and gets magically transformed into a bear himself, to see how the other half lives: blissed out on nature (the moose practice yoga) and communality …
John Sayles, in his script contributions to things like Alligator and The Battle beyond the Stars, has shown his allegiance to grade-Z science fiction. But in this, a tale of a black extraterrestrial hiding out in Harlem from two white pursuers (one of them played by Sayles himself), his allegiance …
Hitler killed off SA leader Ernst Röhm, not only for his ambition but for his brazen, risky gayness. The erotic love and fear simmering in a macho ideology that exalts male bonding and butch brutality gets vivid examination in Nicolo Donato’s film. A smart but alienated youth (Thure Lindhardt) is …
There might be a presumption of seriousness about a ravaging-monster movie in which the monster stays off screen for the first hour, and comes freighted with political symbolism. (To say nothing of the English subtitles! Or of the venerable presences of Jacques Perrin and Edith Scob!) But there is plenty …
Young and black in Philadelphia, the City of...
Jim Sheridan’s Hollywood do-over of Susanne Bier’s Danish original is a wartime soap opera served up as kitchen-sink realism, photographed by Frederick Elmes with a clear and cold albeit clichéd eye for Middle American mundanity. The Good Brother (Tobey Maguire) is off to war in Afghanistan, currently the Good War, …
Documentarian Jake Rademacher reconnects with his brothers and elite Soldiers and Marines he embedded with during the Iraq War. Intercutting footage past and present, he leads us on an insightful, humorous, and moving journey as we watch their path from warfighter to veteran. Directed by Jake Rademacher
Self-admiring con artistry that sets the ideal of the “perfect con” as one where everyone involved gets what he wants. If that includes the wary viewer, the ideal is missed by miles. With Adrien Brody, Rachel Weisz, Mark Ruffalo, Rinko Kikuchi, Robbie Coltrane, and Maximilian Schell; written and directed by …
None other than Jacob and Wilhelm, not yet world-famous folklorists, merely ghostbusting con men, whose ruses are not state-of-the-art magic circa the early 19th Century, but rather state-of-the-art FX circa the 21st. When they are recruited by the occupying French army, however, to investigate a case of missing children (a …
I’ve seen it twice and comparisons to the impossible-to-top Borat are unfair. If a comedy is to be judged strictly on the amount of laughs generated, this cheese is gleeful to stand alone in praise of Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest fountain of offal. With few bones left for the Jackass …