Third big quest for Lucy (Georgie Henley) and Edmund (Skandar Keynes), in a sea of special effects. The 3-D wears down as a wow rather quickly. This is storybook stuff, rich in the boyish bravado of old Errol Flynn movies, soaked in the medieval Christian nostalgia of author C.S. Lewis …
The marble-eyed dragonslayer of Pitch Black -- a decent little movie, four years previous -- is enlisted, over his grumbled protests ("I just wanted to be left alone"), to face a bigger challenge: the planet-by-planet blitzkrieg of the Necromongers, otherwise known as the World-Enders, who want to bring everyone, everywhere, …
Chuck Wepner first became a semi-household name as the white guy given a title shot at Muhammad Ali. That was followed by well-publicized bouts with Andre the Giant, Sylvester Stallone, a wrestling bear, and a coke habit. In each case, Chuck’s ticket to fame was his willingness to play the …
Boyhood best friends, one of whom has moved away and grown up to become a hot-shot music executive in L.A., while the other has stayed a child in every respect but inches. The problem: he still wants to be best friends. A glimmer of an idea, there. But the heart …
A Wong Kar-wai film made during a lull in the production of his far more ambitious Ashes of Time. The imitation-Godard (early-Godard) shooting style -- off-the-cuff, on-the-run -- scares up plenty of local atmosphere (cluttered, clattering Hong Kong) and plenty of individual idiosyncrasy: the whirling-dervish dance of a fast-food vendor …
Korean folk tale of the 18th Century, concerning the governor's son and the courtesan's daughter: "Our enemy is not a person. The enemy is the class that divides us." The illustrational imagery is prettily lit in tones of peach, apricot, salmon. But the imagery is routinely dominated, overriden, trampled down, …
Feature length live music documentary about contemporary progressive rockers King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, filmed during their 2019 tour across Europe & the UK. The immersive experience approximates a musical road movie dipped in turpentine.
The late Edie Sedgwick, ex-Warhol "superstar," in a role modelled on her own life. The film was shot, off and on, over five years (before completion, the leading lady died), and it looks that way, as if the idea of what the film was about changed several times, and as …
Lina Wertmuller returns from oblivion, not with a vengeance, but with a peace overture: a make-nice comedy about a meeting of the minds in a third-grade classroom in an impoverished village in Southern Italy. Filmed predominantly in chin-chucking closeups. With Paolo Villaggio.
Simple-minded history lesson given an impressively stately, weighty presentation. Director Anthony Mann builds the movie as solid as a Medieval castle (and builds it in Spain, where it properly belongs). Charlton Heston, as sculptural an actor as ever walked the screen, has his most stirring moments after his character is …
Lasse Hallstrom's treatment of the John Irving Bildungsroman of the same name: a Second World War period piece centered around one Homer Wells (Tobey Maguire), an abused orphan -- "twice adopted, twice returned" -- and the chosen understudy to the kindly doctor and backdoor abortionist (Michael Caine) who runs the …
The Disney version (of the Charles Perrault fairy tale), with too many teaspoons of sugar — too many chittering mice, to be more specific, and no respectable villain (the wicked stepmother with the Bride-of-Frankenstein hairstyle won't quite do, much less the literal fat cat with the green-and-yellow eyes). The shredding …
Disney's live-action version of the Grimm fairy tale about humble endurance and the joys of ball-going isn't perfect. (For one thing, Helena Bonham Carter's Fairy Godmother is slapsticky and silly in a way befitting wicked stepsisters and no one else. For another, some of the personal and political machinations are …