The latest from Cartoon Saloon points up one of the major differences between animation and cartoons. Hit Wile E. Coyote in the face, and by the next scene, all traces of a black eye have disappeared. But those regenerative powers don’t always apply to animated features, as when your lead …
If moviegoers were to vote on the one genre that best embodies the classification of seen-one-seen-’em-all, surfing films would sweep the election. For every Big Wednesday and Riding Giants, there are literally hundreds of vanity docs, the sole fixation of which is to track the perfect wave. Say hello to …
Faster than a dozen chickens looking to fly the coop! More powerful than a fist halting a whirling lawnmower blade! Able to bend sharp fork tines with a single chomp! Yes, it's the work of Directorman (David Yarovesky), strange appropriator of intellectual property who, along with screenwriters Brian Gunn and …
For his first narrative feature, documentarian Morgan Matthews (Shooting Bigfoot) learns the hard way that a safe blend of comedy and autism make for an unremarkable movie. Asa Butterfield (Hugo) puts his transient lack of motor reactions to the test as a gifted teenager whose life changes when an unconventional …
Need cute? Our mysophobic, sportsophobic, and freshly-cheated on titular killjoy (Pernilla August) walks out of a 40-year marriage and grabs the first job the employment agency has to offer to a 63-year-old homemaker with OCD: soccer coach at a ramshackle youth center. You could be blindfolded and seated in another …
“He's a romantic atheist, she's a religious realist.” How’s that for an incentive-filled tagline? Working from a play by Johan Heldenbergh and Mieke Dobbels, the last thing Belgian director Felix Van Groeningen and writing partner Carl Joos wanted was to transform the story of a bluegrass singer (Johan Heldenbergh) and …
Here’s a welcome anomaly: a film about migration that isn’t structured around a border wall. Roberto (Jorge Guerra) comes from a broken home, but word has spread that the reason he’s fled his mother’s house in Peru owes more to the country’s history of violence than the unmanageable teenager’s proximity …
Into a time when audiences are being bombarded with thinkfree technology or jiggled to death by indie indifference comes Brooklyn, a three Kleenex (boxes), straight-forwardly emotional little period melodrama about a timid (though not for long) young Irish immigrant (Saoirse Ronan) finding her way through 1950s New York. There are …
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 …
From Adam Sandler and the other schmucks at Happy Madison Productions comes a comedy about a compulsive masturbator who suffers from microphallus. A clueless, virginal dweeb (Nick Swarsdon), whose overbite extends further than his manhood, discovers that Mom and Dad were legendary porn stars and decides to follow suit. Bucky, …
A bullet rips through the heart of two studio logos, announcing the return of Walter Hill to the genre that brought him fame, the action comedy. Sylvester Stallone and Sung Kang perform a nifty reversal on the characters Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy played in Hill's 48 Hrs. With a …
Brad Pitt hinted recently that he may be making an early exit from acting. If that means no more Bullet Trains — easily the wormiest script he’s hitched his star to since Mr. and Mrs. Smith — I’ll hold the door for him. Pitt stars as a career hitman suddenly …
Luis Buñuel’s third film, Las Hurdes (Land Without Bread), was the director’s only documentary. For his first feature, visual effects designer Salvador Simó puts into cartoon motion an adaptation of Fermin Solis’ graphic novel based on the months Buñuel spent making the 27-minute short. For 80 minutes I sat contemplating …