You don't have to be crazy to survive into Italian politics, but Viva La Liberta makes the case that it certainly helps to have a certifiable (but witty) identical twin on hand when things get dicey. Toni Servillo, so mordant and melancholy in last year's brilliant The Great Beauty, here …
Prior to his enlisting, a young carpenter’s (Kévin Azaïs) only brush with the military was showing up at recruitment center drives to load up on door prizes. Then one day, the complaisant lad decides to follow the daughter of a client – the survival-driven, sardine-smoothie guzzling doomsday prophet of his …
Life’s circumstances cause a recently married gay couple (Alfred Molina and John Lithgow) to seek temporary housing with relatives while looking for a new place to live. Lithgow is deposited with Marisa Tomei and her maladjusted teenage son while Molina lands on the couch of a pair of hard-partying cops …
A triumph of casting: the magnificently gaunt and haggard John Hawkes as talented, horse-addicted jazz pianist Joe Albany, and the touchingly vulnerable and longing Elle Fanning as his daughter Amy Jo. (Glenn Close also gets in some fine licks as Joe’s long-suffering, tough-but-tender Mama.) A triumph also of visual mood: …
First punch!
A magician (Simon McBurney) asks a lifelong friend and arrogant rival illusionist (Colin Firth) to help debunk a captivating young spiritualist (a regrettably miscast Emma Stone). Set in 1928, there’s bewitchment in production designer Anne Seibel’s ritzy period recreation and Darius Khondji buffed ‘Scope cinematography, but Woody Allen doesn’t have …
The naughtiest kid in town!
"Let us tell an old tale anew, and let us see how well you know it," intones Maleficent (a waxen Angelina Jolie) at the outset of this botched Sleeping Beauty tweak-job. It's fine to tell old tales anew, and it's fine to mold them to some new purpose — say, …
What has the title of a ’50s Republic oater yet plays like a film noir reboot of It Happened One Night? This year’s contribution from SDAFF regular Dave Boyle! Known for his string of inspired romantic comedies (Surrogate Valentine, Daylight Savings), writer-director Dave Boyle now finds himself making a successful …
How much mercenary sex, rampant pill-popping, craven inhumanity, horrific violence, and full-on incest does David Cronenberg have to put into his Hollywood satire before you get the point? Really? That much, huh? Okay, here goes. Julianne Moore caps off her recent triumph as Best Actress in Still Alice with the …