The Angeleno portrait artist Don Bachardy reminisces in frugal video on his three and a half decades of intimacy with British author Christopher Isherwood, thirty years his senior. (The one clip of Isherwood with sound demonstrates dramatically how closely the American protégé patterned his speech after his mentor.) In essence, …
You're welcome to this documentary look into the life of woman-beater and all around a'hole, Chris Brown.
An anti-exploitation biopic that asks audiences to spend two hours waiting for Rebecca Hall to re-create the moment when Sarasota newscaster Christine Chubbuck famously blew her brains out on the 10 o’clock news. You’ll need a shield to help deflect all the irony director Antonio Campos and screenwriter Craig Shilowich …
Haunted-car thriller, from a novel by Stephen King. It's love at first sight when a klutzy high-school kid lays eyes on a 1958 Plymouth Fury, with a history of violent deaths behind it. The feeling is reciprocated: the hero's enemies become the car's enemies, and his friends become its rivals. …
Haunted-car thriller, from a novel by Stephen King. It's love at first sight when a klutzy high-school kid lays eyes on a 1958 Plymouth Fury, with a history of violent deaths behind it. The feeling is reciprocated: the hero's enemies become the car's enemies, and his friends become its rivals. …
It’s Christmas Eve and fiery record store owner Tori Tooms just wants to get drunk and party until the robotic Santa Claus at a nearby toy store goes haywire and makes her night more than a little complicated. Santa Claus begins a rampant killing spree through the neon-drenched snowscape against …
"It'll be a happy Christmas after all!" In the fictional village of Gladbury, every twenty-five years an angel visits the candlemaker and bestows a miracle upon whomever lights the Christmas Candle. However, shortly after the arrival of a new pastor, David Richmond in 1890, the Christmas Candle goes missing.
Disney's re-do is probably better the fewer times you've read, seen, or heard the story. With or without 3-D, this is nevertheless a lavishly, lovingly, and imaginatively illustrated edition of the Dickens holiday classic, in a graphic style congenial to a Victorian ghost story, and in a motion-capture computer-animation technique …
It’s a cold Christmas Eve and mean-spirited miser Ebenezer Scrooge (Nicholas Farrell) has an unexpected visit from the spirit of his former business partner Jacob Marley (Mark Gatiss). Bound in chains as punishment for a lifetime of greed, the unearthly figure explains it isn’t too late for Scrooge to change …
The story is so simple, so glaringly obvious and filled with delight, that it’s a wonder no one thought of it until this day: a pair of siblings surreptitiously hop aboard Santa’s sleigh for the ride of a lifetime. Movie over Edmund “Miracle on 34th St.” Gwenn, there’s a new …
If the original dropped like a diamond in the Christmas stocking, this unavoidable sequel lands like a lump of coal. Max Lieberman, who did such a splendid job scripting the original, appears to have crumbled under the weight of Chris Columbus’ (Home Alone I & II, Mrs. Doubtfire) desire to …
Writer-director Mitch Davis's take on the multiple-linked-storylines-holiday-movie, with the link provided by six stalled elevators during a power outage in New York City. Starring, among others, Patrick Stewart and John Heder as guys on the opposite ends of the power spectrum who discover that getting stuck in an elevator really …
On Christmas Eve, a rambunctious extended family gathers for the last holiday in their ancestral home. As the night wears on, the teenagers sneak out to claim the wintry suburb as their own. Directed by Tyler Taormina, starring Michael Cera, Elsie Fisher, Maria Dizzia, Gregg Turkington, Matilda Fleming, and Lev …
If ever there was a case to sue a movie studio for false advertising, it’s 1944’s Christmas Holiday. Cute and perky songstress Deanna Durbin stars opposite hoofer Gene Kelly’s Cheshire grin. But instead of a light, frothy studio musical, audiences were treated to a rare holiday noir. Dave Kehr referred …
Preston Sturges's post-Depression Depression comedy. An office toiler at the low end of the wage scale, but with hope everpresent in his heart, enters a coffee company's slogan contest (his slogan: "If you can't sleep, it isn't the coffee; it's the bunk'), is hoaxed by his fellow workers into believing …