As is customary with awareness-raising health documentaries, expect heart-wrenching patient testimonials, statistics stamped across the screen, and even a race for the cure. Director Andrea Kalin’s added twist is a six-doctor band that rocks out against gynecologic cancer. A cry of, “Breast cancer has a ribbon, but GYN cancer has …
Oh, man, I was totally ready to dismiss this one as Aaron Paul's deep downgrade in the costar department (Bryan Cranston swapped out for a Ford Mustang) until I got to Michael Keaton as 21st-century Car Talk host, saying that he could feel, "love, vengeance, and motor oil all swirling …
Quite possibly the most conventional and conservative comedy featuring two straight dudes engaged in a dildo swordfight you'll see all year. Director Nicholas Stoller's (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) story of a ludicrous "battle" between new parents (Seth Rogen and an uncommitted Rose Byrne) and the freshly transplanted fraternity next door lets …
Director Shawn Levy and star Ben Stiller both faltered in their recent attempts at grown-up, elevating wisdom pictures (This is Where I Leave You and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, respectively). So it's almost a relief to find them striding confidently here through the smooth, familiar terrain of entertaining …
Nightcrawler bolsters a fear that’s rattled my core since first it became clear that digital was here to stay: every schmuck with a video camera thinks they can direct. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Louis Bloom, a determined drifter who taps his inner-video journalist to become a successful network news stringer. …
Hollywood’s way of paying reparations for its slavish devotion to white serial killers. The narrative kicks off with the soon-to-be liberated psycho killer Idris Elba’s backstory, dispatched by way of a newscast played under the opening-credit ride to a probation hearing. It gets staler. For a third of the picture, …
How do you know it’s a Liam Neeson action film? Simple: there’s a picture of his daughter taped beneath the sun visor of his car. Neeson stars as booze-soaked flying cop who begins receiving midair death texts from a fellow passenger. While no fictional relative of Neeson was hurt during …
After parting ways with the 007 franchise, Pierce Brosnan continues to outsource James Bond in a modish manner that should make Daniel Craig’s blue eyes green with envy. The November Man follows Tailor of Panama and The Matador with this rip-snorting tale of a high level CIA official who drops …
A battle over a nut cart finds a fiercely independent, self-serving squirrel named Surly exiled from his local park. With rat-de-camp Buddy at his side, Surly is forced to venture out into the big city to gather that summer’s provisions. We are mercifully spared a spate of easy testicular double-entendres, …
...violence become one and the same as Gainsbourg, no longer reliant on Stacy Martin to play her in flashback, steps up to the plate with a stinging S&M; relationship she consents to with Jamie Bell in hope of finding the recipe to rekindle her libido. Once our suspicions concerning Seligman’s …
Juan Manuel Bernal plays a lightly fictionalized version of disgraced Catholic priest and founder of the Legionaries of Christ Marcial Maciel, who was eventually ordered to "retire to a life of prayer and penance" after years of outrageous sexual misconduct. Here, he is the head of a seminary, where pious …
Hats off to any film that tries (and succeeds) at presenting challenging, off-putting characters from whose palms I’m reluctantly persuaded to eat. Character identification has never been my celluloid raison d'être, but damn if this movie didn’t get to me in a manner destined to cloud critical thinking. Jenny Slate …
For those who prefer battery acid to Visine comes a blindsiding horror bore. What should one expect from a film whose poster screams, “From the producer of Paranormal Activity and Insidious"? There’s an element of suspense in the form of fragmented sentences (“You haven’t been here since…,” "We should try …