Based on a true incident, the story concerns a light-skinned half-caste whose sunny countenance is gradually clouded over by contact with white society in turn-of-the-century Australia. "Do you have any religion other than nigger?" -- this asked by a rustic during a brief recess from chopping off the heads of …
Feminist revenge fantasy about a mutually liberating alliance between a neglected French wife and a battered Algerian streetwalker. The sharp observations of modern life, and the blunt and bludgeoning ones alike, are coated in a debilitating DV image. With Catherine Frot, Rachida Brakni, Vincent Lindon; written and directed by Coline …
Why doesn’t this story of lively little Louise Brooks’ escape from Wichita for the cosmopolitan pleasures of New York City and modern dance (before she heads off to become one of cinema’s early It Girls) work? It ain’t the fault of Haley Lu Richardson, who plays Brooks like the sassy …
Not just another "biopic," but one that requires colossal gall for any actor or director to undertake. And Robert Downey, Jr., and Richard Attenborough, respectively, may reasonably be described as any old actor and director -- supremely uncharismatic in the first case, surpassingly pedestrian in the second. To their credit, …
Profiles in Chivas. Instead of following in brother Jack’s footsteps, Teddy Kennedy (Jason Clarke) shepherds a pair of waterlogged loafers to shore. The Fredo Corleone of Hyannis Port and indulged son of Joe Kennedy (Bruce Dern, horrifyingly effective as a monster ghastlier than any Hollywood has yet to fabricate), Teddy …
Director Neill Blomkamp goes back to the single-city, small-scale sci-fi of District 9, but keeps the super-sized ambition of Elysium in this story of a busted police droid who becomes the world's first sentient robot, thanks to nerd God Dev Patel. The result is frequently messy to the point of …
Neil Simon re-creates more or less the circumstances of his real-life marriage to Marsha Mason, he a recent widower and she a recent divorcee. The badinage between these two, who, as one of them observes, "talk in the same rhythm," is on a more lifelike level than usual in a …
High-grade Hitchcock knockoff by Stanley Donen, with Cary Grant on hand to supply pedigree. Audrey Hepburn, composer Henry Mancini, cinematographer Charles Lang, designer Jean D'Eaubonne, and the city of Paris all add their share of glamour. With Walter Matthau, James Coburn, George Kennedy.
Anglophilia on the rampage. The factual story concerns two rival British runners, one a Christian (and a charmer of an actor: Ian Charleson), and the other a Jew, who appear to be heading toward a showdown in the 1924 Olympics until Fate (not always the best plotter) finds a way …
When small-time criminal Charley Varrick leads a crew to rob a bank, things don't exactly go according to plan. Not only are there casualties, but also, he and his surviving cohort, Harman Sullivan, discover that they've snagged far more cash than they were expecting --and it's money that belongs to …
Tim Burton's consolation prize for losing out on the Lemony Snicket concession (surely that had his name written on it) is a remake of the fractured fairy tale by Roald Dahl, a spindly little framework freighted with production values, CG imagery, and dark dense bordello color, like some scrawny four-foot …
A poor little rich boy, drummed out of every private school in a reachable radius, shows up undiplomatically for his first day at public school in a blazer and tie, toting an attaché case, glad-handing like a Presidential candidate. But after a beating or two, he attains his uppermost goal …