Gimmicky thriller whose single gimmick, if you have not been tipped off beforehand, dawns on you with a mounting sensation of hopelessness and resignation. Ryan Reynolds, in a word, is to be the only human being to appear on screen for the duration, entombed underground in a wooden coffin in …
A feature length documentary based on the events and circumstances surrounding an avalanche in Alpine Meadows, CA. In 1982, a massive avalanche descended on Alpine Meadows Ski Resort in Lake Tahoe, California, triggering a desperate five day search for eight missing people. BURIED chronicles the third deadliest avalanche in US …
Well, somebody sooner or later had to cross the Australian continent. And somebody sooner or later had to make a movie about them. This is it, a hundred and twenty-seven years later, to be exact. The first scene, with a topiary maze illusionistically opening up onto the Outback, is daring …
Christina Aguilera plays Ali, a cute-as-pie Iowa waitress with aspirations of Sunset Strip stardom. She finds herself as part of the act in a Los Angeles club, catering to the tastes of the Moulin Rouge, until the club’s owner, Cher, hears her sing. Aguilera does not so much steal the …
The first blast of Kon Ichikawa's double-barreled anti-war attack. Where Fires on the Plain (1959) was to take the carnal approach (with its literal and metaphorical cannibalism), this one takes the spiritual, with its penitent Japanese infantryman voluntarily leaving the world of the living and joining that of the dead …
Under Pontecorvo's benevolent but often wishy-washy leadership, the natives on a Portuguese island colony arise in revolutionary fervor. This solemn historical pageant is thrown somewhat out of whack by the hefty presence of Marlon Brando, a willing martyr to Western decadence in the fragrant role of a mercenary Britisher. The …
The Coen brothers revisit their favored stupidity theme: Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, Fargo, The Big Lebowski (that one above all), O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the secondhand Ladykillers, at least the Llewellyn Moss protagonist in No Country for Old Men. Back to the well once more. The placement of this …
A displaced Afghan journalist comes to rest in a Northern California town where a job at a small town newspaper leads to danger. Dominic Rains, Melissa Leo, and James Franco star.
First announced under the title of An Alan Smithee Film, it then turned into an actual Alan Smithee film: Alan Smithee being the official Hollywood pseudonym of any director who, for any variety of reasons, has withdrawn his name from a project. Arthur Hiller (who appears in the outtakes at …
A pretty young woman (Jong-seo Jeon) whose goal in life it is to become a pantomime artist so that she may pretend to eat tangerines whenever she pleases, asks a troubled former classmate (Ah-In Yoo) to look after a cat she may or may not own. To his surprise, she …
Beefy slices of life carved out of three characters in the outlands of Louisiana. Single mom Miss Helen (Karen Kaia Livers) — her husband died of AIDS — appears more determined in her efforts to prevent her dog from itching itself to death than she is in looking after her …
Directorial debut of the screenwriter of Babel, 21Grams, Amores Perros, Guillermo Arriaga, firm in the belief that no story is so hokey it can't be saved by being fractured, shattered, reassembled out of order. (The connection between two widely separated time zones would have been easier to make if not …
John Wells follows his half-baked August: Osage County with another recipe for disaster. “You have to be a prick to make it in this business,” announces a character in most flattering terms around the same time Gordon Ramsay’s name appears in the opening credits as executive producer. That may explain …
The Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film of 1994. Not too hard to see why. Russians penitent about their Communist history (the purges of the Thirties, in specific) are bound to be warmly embraced in the West. On their knees and under the lash is how Westerners like them best. …