Matthew McConaughey plays a bag-of-bones, good ol' boy piece of sex-addled trailer trash who has the misfortune to bang the wrong (female) intravenous drug-user (HIV+) in the wrong way (sans condom) in the wrong place (darkest Texas) at the wrong time (the panicked, unmedicated '80s). Suddenly, he's cast out among …
Caringly acted, expensively produced, and bottomlessly empty suspense movie, wherein the Antichrist, just reaching puberty and entering the military academy, is watched over by a bad fairy -- or fairy devilfather, if you will -- in the form of a pesky crow who prefers to be photographed in profile and …
Although the story comes from a certified science-fiction author, Roger Zelazny, and has been adapted by a couple of good hands, Alan Sharp and Lukas Heller, this post-WWIII adventure is a virtually unplotted sightseeing tour through stereotyped nuclear wastelands (i.e., the serviceable Southwest desert, covered over by Kool Aid skies). …
Visconti's horrendous dredging up of the Nazi nightmare begins inside a blast furnace, and for nearly three hours thereafter, his vision of human depravity rages like a fever. It's open to question whether Visconti was very interested in Naziism as a historical fact, or whether he was merely interested in …
Hey, remember punk rock? You know, before it got pretty? These guys were that.
Oddly focussed docudrama, riddled with capriciously off-balance compositions, on a disastrous interlude in the illustrious career of English football manager Brian Clough, his runaway ambition and runaway confidence in his rivalry with fellow manager Don Revie ("I wouldn't say I'm the top manager in the country, but I'm in the …
Writer and director Whit Stillman (Metropolitan, Last Days of Disco) fumbles in his renewed quest to be our WASP Woody Allen. On a generic college campus, prim coeds at a suicide-prevention center exchange snippy witticisms and contend with fraternity boors. Attitude prevails, and the almost private gags (about men, depression, …
A mere 23 years after his last feature, Chilean surrealist Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo, The Holy Mountain) returns to the screen, older and yes, possibly wiser. The loony-goony visuals are still in play, but there's a sympathy for the audience, a desire to put things to good and even meaningful …
One’s appreciation of this regulation cable biodoc hinges on one’s interest in the subject matter, not the medium. Director Steven Cantor begins by establishing a focus of attention — in this case, ballet pin-up boy Sergei Polunin — before hopping a ferry to his childhood home in Ukraine and then …
A groundbreaking "dark" musical by Danish director Lars von Trier -- groundbreaking, anyway, if you have forgotten about, or never knew about, The Threepenny Opera, Show Boat, Porgy and Bess, Carmen Jones, West Side Story, Oliver, Sweet Charity, Catch My Soul, Pennies from Heaven, One from the Heart, Newsies, Demy's …
Paceless, listless political thriller about a terrorist insurrection in an unnamed Latin American country that seems as though it must be Argentina. (Note the Calle Peron street sign.) Javier Bardem gives it some backbone as the honest-cop hero, humble, grave, apprehensive, all too human. With Laura Morante; directed by John …
Kevin Costner's three-hour-and-one-minute Western, his first directorial effort, readily brings to mind Sam Fuller's Run of the Arrow, which likewise tells of a Civil War veteran -- more interestingly, a die-hard Confederate -- who attempts to find a new home, a new nation, among the Sioux. There are several points …