Mike Burden (Garrett Hedlund), proprietor of the Redneck Museum, is Klan and stupid to boot. Were it not for girlfriend Judy (Andrea Riseborough), the film’s backbone, and her faith in the redemptive power that can reach even monsters, this would be just another say-no-to-hate potboiler. A fact-based race drama with …
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 …
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 …
WWJDD, an acronym to live by. Space Jam, The Phantom, Guardians of the Galaxy, Spider-Men, just this weekend during Fantastic Four...how many times has the question chugged through my mind like a ticker tape: What would Joe Dante do? But when genius goes wrong, nothing goes right: Chaplin rang down …
Chip Gutchell’s (director and co-writer Tyler Cornack) proctologist clearly learned his trade at the hands of a prison rapist, yet somehow the bewildered, unhappily married IT tech leaves the exam a new man. The sudden desire to lodge things up his backside is very much a new development, and isn’t …
The first thing Alexandre (Melvil Poupaud) does after going public about his childhood molestation at the hands of a priest is to gather his family of five around the dinner table to inform them of his decision. One is prone to expect excess in a film by François Ozon (Water …
Just another pair of pretty faces, Gemma Arterton and the uni-expressional Saoirse Ronan — no match for Interview with a Vampire's Pitt and Cruise - star as mother and daughter vampires in Neil Jordan’s return to the genre that brought him the most commercial success. Jumping back and forth within …
Five friends, in one log house, surrounded by numerous flesh-eating neighbors. Sound familiar? It should, seeing how only fourteen years separate this from its predecessor. Not since Gus Van Sant plunged a knife in Psycho have we witnessed such an unnecessary remake. Had Quentin Tarantino upped the number of “Hatefuls” …
Terrorized teens in a desolate location become unwitting participants in a faith-based reality TV show. For 40 minutes we’re treated to an encyclopedic vivisection of everything wrong with contemporary horror movies. The overly clever script by Joss Whedon and director Drew Goddard eventually falls victim to its own satirization, but …
To save time from running the title through Wikipedia, the cadejo are a pair of magical creatures along the lines of Oz’s good witch/bad witch sisters. The only reason Bea (Pamela Martinez) invited older sister Sarita (Karen Martinez) to the club that evening was so that grandma would let her …
The Academy has a long history of rewarding fetching troupers who consent to part from makeup and shampoo long enough to flagrantly play against type. Jennifer Aniston finds out the hard way that the road to Oscar is anything but a cakewalk. Unlike Charlize Theron, who quite literally transformed into …
A young baker moves from Berlin to Jerusalem in search of his late lover’s family only to end up playing semblant husband and father to the dead man’s widow and son. Credit first-time writer/director Ofir Raul Graizer with pulling off something of a miracle. Not only is the unorthodox premise …
History, sentiment, and inventiveness intertwine in this stylishly crafted love letter to the children of inventor Christopher Latham Sholes. You never forget your first. Mine was a beat up Royal originally owned by Millie, the young college student whose bedroom sat opposite me in the courtyard. For years, I fell …