The name of the movie is the name of a Mexican resort hotel-cum-hospital where half a dozen gringas await their turn to adopt native newborns; more bluntly, where the haves take from the have-nots. Or still more bluntly, where the Left-leaning John Sayles can show off some of his right …
Will Ferrell deadpans his performance in a semi sendup of Spanish telenovelas (yes, it’s in Spanish), and his unwinking commitment to the role makes all the surrounding silliness enjoyable. It’s all there: florid themes, cheap production values, goofy technique, hack dialogue, and awesome ranchero ballads. The weakest stuff is the …
Or, The Ballad of Poor Jean. Story of a wealthy Brazilian family in free-fall, focusing mainly on the teenage son. Directed and cowritten by Fellipe Barbosa.
Undisclosed chapter in the career of the 18th-century rake: his courtship of a protofeminist ghostwriter and swordswoman, the Ms. Right who can tie him down for keeps. The sort of romantic fantasy, in other words, that ruins real lives. A tiresome rompish costume party in antiquing golden light, under a …
When all else deserts him -- all purpose, all commitment, all vitality -- Fellini likely will still engineer projects with unstinting multimillion-dollar budgets, with eerie, enclosed, otherworldly sets, and with unsurpassed color work by his faithful cameraman Giuseppe Rotunno. He appears to be closing in on that goal in Casanova. …
A documentary film team travels the U.S. searching for people living their lives selflessly and interviews them about how that way of living affects others and themselves. Random people on the street discuss where they’ve witnessed unselfish love and where they’ve seen its absence. Well-known figures are interviewed, including Pete …
A forlorn author of fanboy novels (Justin Long) finds his muse in divine barista Evan Rachel Wood. Hours spent researching her Facebook “likes” help Long transition into the perfect catch. Attention must finally be paid to such a person, and a frail ego forces him to rethink positioning her as …
Scorsese, doffing the ill-fitting penguin suit of The Age of Innocence, goes back to gangsters and to the scriptwriter of Good Fellas, Nicholas Pileggi. One major drawback here is the same drawback as there, only bigger (or rather, at three hours, longer): the brunt of the storytelling is entrusted to …
As scandalous lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Kevin Spacey opens with a funny wallop of vanity and profanity, like a bursting boil. But raffish riffs about D.C. corruption and satirical performances by Spacey, Barry Pepper, and Jon Lovitz only skim the moral and political toxins. It’s like Tom Wolfe material converted to …
The story of the rise and fall of Jack Abramoff — “the number one lobbyist in Washington” — ranges far and wide (the Republican Revolution, the Mariana Islands, Angola, Hollywood, Indian casinos, Tom DeLay, John McCain), but the message stays single-track: the sellout of democracy, with clips of James Stewart …
Taking the title from Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel, the 007 franchise approaches the opportunity of a new James Bond as the opportunity of a new beginning. The new Bond, Daniel Craig, is not just another pretty face, in fact is a pretty craggy face (Craiggy face, perhaps that …
Ersatz Spielberg. (Meaning that the Great Man himself -- the Great Overgrown Boy -- the Great Escaped Inner Child -- was only a co-executive producer and was wise enough to leave the directing to an apprentice called Brad Silberling.) The titular "Friendly Ghost" resembles a fattened-up, but see-through, version of …
With this, Woody Allen looks like he has overextended his stay in England. The refreshment is gone. Less engrossing than Match Point, less engaging than Scoop, it spins a yarn of working-class brothers (Ewan McGregor, Colin Farrell, working their thespian tails off) who, in exchange for financial favors from a …