Back we go (kicking and screaming, quite likely), back to those halcyon days of the British Empire, when men were men and women were Oriental: "I want you to be fantastical good," chirrups the half-naked Chinese beauty, feeding aphrodisiacal prawns into the mouth of her master. James Clavell's very fat ...
Laird Hamilton was the golden child of the surf set, a natural-born rider possessed of an innate flexibility and an unheard-of sense of balance. The lad’s natural good looks helped, too, at least to gain him a modeling career and at least one unforgettable big screen performance. (As one talking ...
Herein lies the problem: 19-year-old Ryder (Logan Miller) doth not protest enough when his California-phobic uncle’s (Josh Hamilton) false accusation of child molestation against the lad turns a Nebraska family reunion into a grievance-dredging weekend inquisition. Unless Ryder was meant to get off on being a tool in his perverted ...
That would be the Mississippi, specifically, the part that flows through the one-time musical Mecca of Memphis. The documentary takes its structure from the recording of an album that pairs up various Stax records legends (Bobby Bland and Mavis Staples are just two of the standouts) with more modern artists ...
A ring of Albanian white slavers (Middle Eastern buyers) has the bad fortune to shanghai the virgin daughter of a retired American superspy — “I was a preventer,” he understates — on her first morning of vacation in Paris. There is no satisfaction in the quick-as-a-blink detective work that leads ...
You wouldn’t know it at first glance, but sleepy-eyed Liam Neeson, fighting valiantly to assume the Charles Bronson mantle, and an even more lethargic Maggie Grace are both rolling in threequel clover. His false conviction of murder is what eventually starts the roller coaster ride in motion, but not before ...
Elementary heist thriller rendered unwatchable by director John Luessenhop’s hopped-up visuals, the cameraman so excited (often over nothing) that he can’t hold his instrument steady, pressing in so close as to lose sight of what we’re supposed to be looking at, always a step behind the action, a telephoto lens ...
Michael Shannon, who often seems like Frankenstein looking sadly for his doctor, plays a scared and scary guy in the flat Midwest. His sinister dreams and fantasies clue him that a vast storm is coming, and he hurls his fragile family into panic by building a big shelter (he already ...
Inspirational pablum, "inspired," to begin with, "by a true story," that of Pierre Dulaine (played by that loverly Latin, Antonio Banderas), who volunteers to bring his courtly Old World manners and his ballroom dance steps into Detention Hall at a rough New York high school: Mad Hot Ballroom meets Blackboard ...
Woody Allen's kidding of crime movies of all types -- the prison break type, the stick-em-up type, the semi-documentary type, the newsreel type. The marital comedy, with Janet Margolin, is more consistent, especially in earning laughs. Altogether, it's what Johnny Carson might describe as "wild."
A window fan blows the heat out of a sweltering Toronto kitchen as Michelle Williams kneels on the floor, her cheek pressed against the glowing oven door, her heart burning with desire. Happily married doesn't always mean happily ever after, and the tension between the two sets the tone for ...
An ad exec and an escaped con do a kind of Prince and the Pauper, with complications never amusing, constantly annoying. Largest part of the credit for that goes to the foghorn finesse of James Belushi. (Guess which role he plays. Belushi's fans will be allowed two guesses.) With Charles ...