The single star is because the setup is fine — almost great, even. Estranged father and son (Will and Jaden Smith) survive a crash landing on a hostile planet. Dad's injured, and so it's the son who must retrieve an emergency beacon from a distant chunk of wreckage. Technology will …
Living most of his adult life in Chicago, Franek (Ireneusz Czop), developed a fondness for throwing the word “Yid” around. But upon returning to Poland after a 20 year absence, Franek discovers the town he grew up in harbors a bulwark of genuine, old-school anti-Semites. Schindler’s Light. Writer-director Wladyslaw Pasikowski’s …
Writer-director Jill Soloway digs into the psyche of the happy homemaker's shadow self, the miserable mommy. (When all your needs are met, that's when you notice you're unhappy.) Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) is uninterested in her child, unmoved by her husband, and unconsoled by her friends. On a joyless lark, she …
Or: late-term abortionists are people, too. After Tiller looks at the (very) few doctors in America willing to perform late-term abortions in the aftermath of Dr. George Tiller's murder. From the trailer: "It's guilt no matter which way you go. Guilt if you go ahead and do what we're doing, …
A date movie for those who like their passion slow-burning and risky and their storytelling laconic and moody. Bob (Casey Affleck, whose voice and manner seem to hail from the Great Depression) is an outlaw who winds up in jail for a crime he didn't commit (plus maybe some he …
A relentless gallery of raillery aimed at introducing Steve Coogan and company’s Alan Partridge -the quick-witted and eminently inflated fictional radio and television host - to American multiplexes. The corporatization of a British radio station causes the recently axed overnight man (Colm Meany) to flip out: he ends up taking …
It’s all about the pacing in first-time director Neto Villalobos’ leisurely unfolding of a (game)cock and bull tale about a Costa Rican broomstick in security guard’s clothing and the friendships he derives after bantering a bantam out of his landlord. Chalo (Allan Cascante) is the type of charmer who’ll sit …
Director M. Rajesh has produced an unfunny rom-com about a girl who can't sing very well?
Viewers of a certain age may remember Robert Redford as one of the great handsome men of cinema. The sun-kissed skin, the wind-tousled hair, the little-boy smile that let you know he couldn’t lose. Like the title says, all is lost. Disaster rouses an solo yachtsman from comfortable sleep: a …
A heaping helping of period pleasure from director David O. Russell. Irving Rosenfeld (a gutty Christian Bale, resplendent in combover and ascot) is a '70s Jay Gatsby without the class anxiety, a man comfortable with the notion that everybody is, like him, working the con — getting along by lying …
A broke, disenchanted med student (Katharine Isabelle) answers an ad for a strip club, winds up freelancing as a surgeon for the mob, and quickly becomes a marketable handicrafter skilled in the art of body modification. The Canadian writing, directing team of twisted twins Jen and Sylvia Soska, aided by …
Having romped around the harmlessly inane world of local television news in the original, well-coiffed anchorman Ron Burgundy & Co. (Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, David Koechner, and Paul Rudd) enter a world that is much more serious and in much more need of lampooning: the nightmare of infotainment, pandering, and …
Remember that one summer when we were all anime friends?
Director Alex Gibney makes cinematic lemonade from lemons whose flavor was most likely enhanced through prohibited methods. Gibney had to shelve his documentary on seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong's miracle comeback in 2009, because, of course, it turned out it wasn't a miracle. Rather, it seems it was …