Just diverting enough, thanks in large part to the weary charm of Denzel Washington's undercover DEA agent, and the earnest charm of Mark Wahlberg's undercover Navy investigator. (The wiseassery Wahlberg uses to cover the earnestness, alas, quickly wears thin.) Thanks also to a willingness to make almost everyone at least …
Zack Snyder, who has made a couple of comic-book movies of his own (300, Watchmen), wrote the script for this, perhaps his most comic-book movie to date. Some clarification is of course in order: "comic book" here indicates: a complete detachment from the actual constraints of physical reality (cascading sheets …
Fargo: the Next Generation? Perhaps, if by that you mean “brisk, violent, and largely unsentimental about the depths of human folly.” It’s also the least preening of Summer 2011’s many raunch comedies, content to spend its time among the genuinely raunchy. A would-be white-trash criminal mastermind (Danny McBride) straps a …
Television veteran Chadwick Boseman gives a fine, canny performance as Jackie Robinson, the man who broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Well, except for when he talks to his wife and infant son: then, writer-director Brian Helgeland’s script drives him into speechmaking about the …
A slice-of-life indie-looking movie about a peevish, aimless young man (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) facing cancer. Except it’s mostly not really about the young man’s struggle with cancer; it’s about his difficulties with girls (Mom included). Once you have that down, it’s easier to see why most of the film seems to …
Say this for Cassie Sullivan (Chloë Grace Moretz): no matter how bad things get during the alien-wrought apocalypse, her hair looks great. And usually, her lipstick as well. Lucky thing, too, since she spends a fair portion of the film in the company of Evan Walker, the world’s prettiest hunk …
Writer-director Trent Haaga takes on Bryan Smith’s novel about a beta dude (Matthew Gray Gubler, looking like a cross between Jim Carrey, Steve Buscemi, and Joel McHale) who finds himself in thrall to a series of alpha chicks — several of whom are cheerfully, plainly psychopathic — and who must …
An English soldier (Jack O'Connell, doe-eyed and square-jawed) finds himself shipped to a foreign country that isn't quite foreign: Northern Ireland, there to keep the peace in Belfast, a city rife with division. You've got your Catholics and Protestants, of course, but then you've got your factions within each, not …
A pushcart war erupts in a Paraguyan marketplace after Victor, a 17-year-old delivery boy played by young Baba Booey lookalike Celso Franco, unwittingly agrees to transport a passel of crates containing the remains of a disassembled kidnap victim. What starts with a pulse-pounding foot-chase soon gives way to a stock …
Michael Shannon gets the thankless task of trying to humanize Wall Street's capitalist swine Gordon Gekko, right down to the speech about how hard work never really helped anybody get ahead and the passing of the moral buck on to the whole rotten, rigged, remorseless system. (Thankless because it's Gekko's …
A bright young man at a fancy tech company (Domhnall Gleeson) gets picked to visit the company’s founder (Oscar Isaac) in his country home, er, homey concrete fortress. There, he is introduced to Ava (Alicia Vikander), a sweet and pretty robot who might just be the world’s first Artificial Intelligence. …
Perhaps surprisingly, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is not just a showcase for director Timur Bekmambetov's relentless and varied barrage of combat-related special effects. (This is one of those films where 3-D really makes a difference, perhaps especially in its treatment of vampire eyes. We're a long way from Twilight's red …
The early ‘90s TV series about the Edina Monsoon (Jennifer Saunders) Patsy Stone (Joanna Lumley), and the triumph of PR over reality gets a worthy capstone, full of gleeful amorality and two characters whose self-absorption reaches a sort of mystical apotheosis. Even in the narcissistic world of fashion, Eddie and …
James Gunn did a little movie about dysfunctional superheroes called Super and landed a big budget feature about same called Guardians of the Galaxy. Josh Trank did a little movie about angsty adolescent superheroes called Chronicle and landed a big budget feature about same called The Fantastic Four. Now Gavin …