Easy Rider for a decadent generation, Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus and 2012 is a smart but sour South American road movie that doesn't know what to do with its drug-fueled revelations. Say this for star Michael Cera — he's willing to play unlikable. Here, he's Jamie, an ill-mannered …
A film -- the first film -- from the democratic South Africa. And as such, a rather tardy adaptation of the Alan Paton novel, particularly when held up against Zoltan Korda's 1951 version. It recounts, in between outright sermons, the "bitter journey" of a rural black clergyman to Johannesburg, where …
Or cry uncle. A clique of prep-school brats, in raw, grainy, glary photography, perpetrate a serial-killer hoax that seems to be coming true. A mindless mind game designed to ensnarl, even ensnarling the designers. With Julian Morris, Lindy Booth, Jared Padalecki, and Jon Bon Jovi; directed by Jeff Wadlow.
Satirical science fiction, alternative-universe subdivision: What would have happened had the South won the Civil War? (One thing: it would have become known as the War of Northern Aggression.) A viable idea, but throttled by ham-fisted humor, amateur acting, and a cheap and expedient mockumentary format, mixing archive footage, staged …
My interest was piqued thanks to a friend’s family who adores C.S. Lewis almost as much as I do Jerry. They guided me through a couple of Narnia sequels, but their everlasting zeal failed to translate when it came to this ill-staged big screen bump-up. Alas, I am at my …
Reunion tour of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young (average age, sixty-two and a half), hoping to conjure the spirit of their Vietnam protests and transfer it to the Iraq War. The new music isn’t top-flight, nor is the filmmaking (concert footage, archive footage, interview footage, plus “objective” reporting from an …
An adaptation of the Korean film Miss Granny, Cuando Sea Joven concerns a 70-year-old woman who gets a second chance at life when she magically becomes her 22-year-old self. Posing as Maria to hide her true identity, she reclaims her musical dream by becoming the lead singer in her grandson's …
A collage of myths, stereotypes, facts, and artifacts of pre-Castro Cuba: the cigar factory, the sugar plantation, the yacht club, the night club, the golf course, the jai-alai and tennis courts, the cockfight, the gambling, the graft, the gold-braided army uniforms, the bare-shouldered women's fashions, the tile walls and floors, …
The title of this documentary tells all. See it on the big screen. Directed by Peter H. Chang.
Luis Garcia (Lou Gossett), a once influential and now unresponsive Cuban musician living out his days in a dementia-induced fog, is afforded one last whirl at life when his nursing home places him in the care of callow, well-intentioned pre-med student Mina (Ana Golja). She replenishes his dietary regimen with …
Title tells all.
Reluctantly, 17-year-old Gretchen leaves her American home to live with her father, who has just moved into a resort in the German Alps with his new family. Arriving at their future residence, they are greeted by Mr. König, her father's boss, who takes an inexplicable interest in Gretchen's mute half-sister …
This film plays as part of the San Diego Latino Film Festival's Cine Gay Showcase. According to the festival brochure, "In Demián Bichir’s directorial debut, Refugio does not know that Juan, the man who saved his life is, in fact, his own father. Fate has brought them face to face …
The well-drawn contrast between a child's world and an adult's world makes the early, time-biding stages more tolerable than in some horror movies. The problem, once the time-biding is over, is that the whole idea of a movie about a rabid dog seems irredeemably dull, even if that dog were …