The appropriate cartographical co-ordinates are easy to fix: the Coen brothers' Fargo, for its Minnesota setting, accents, and idioms (one of the unsung stars of that film, Kristin Rudrüd, has a cameo as the TV spokesperson for the St. Paul Pork Company, and is permitted to keep her own surname …
A widowed mother on her first date in years arrives at an upscale restaurant where she is relieved that her date, Henry, is more charming and handsome than she expected. But their chemistry begins to curdle as Violet begins being irritated and then terrorized by a series of anonymous drops …
A suspended U.S. Marshal (Wesley Snipes) goes out on his own, and into the alien skydiving community, to avenge his brother's murder and thwart a plot to cripple the DEA. Basically boneheaded action film, spruced up with some attractive Hawksian trappings, including especially a husky-voiced heroine (Yancy Butler) and two …
Three women named Cissie, three identically murdered husbands, a games-playing coroner who unsuccessfully woos each widow in turn (aged roughly from sixty down to twenty), a young boy who counts dead bodies of all species and sets off fireworks at their places of death, a hoop-skirted jump-roper who counts the …
A conventional, imitative, unimaginative, unadventurous dark comedy concerning the multiple suspects in the suspicious death of the most despised woman in Verplanck, N.Y. Dark comedies are not what they used to be. They are much nearer the middle of the road. (Once again the cliché of the canine casualty: run …
A major ouch. The kiddie-lit holiday homily — "Maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store./ Maybe Christmas perhaps means a little bit more" — illustrated in theme-park sets and costumes (rodenty snouts on all the citizens of Whoville save the little heroine, Taylor Momsen, and Christine Baranski). Jim Carrey, as …
Color Dr. Seuss’s “earth-friendly” children’s book gloomy green and Illumination Entertainment’s animated counterpart a blinding shade of pestled pastel. (Consider sporting two pair of 3-D specs.) The ecological message holds firm, only this time our young hero does it all to impress a chick. Throwaway gags (Nemo can be found …
Stanley Kubrick's scattershot spoof on the military in the push-button age. Several of the players — Sterling Hayden, George C. Scott, and Peter Sellers in two of his three roles — have their own assigned areas well under control, while Kubrick darts helter-skelter in eagerly salivating pursuit of comedy material …
More specifically, a Dallas gynecologist (Richard Gere, with a tidier haircut and a sincerer persona) and his psychotic wife, his materialistic sister-in-law, his protective and adoring receptionist, his numerous demanding patients, a country-club golf pro who becomes his new lover, and his two grown daughters, one of whom is soon …
Something the cat dragged in -- a scruffy but not unappealing little movie, by Gus Van Sant, Jr., about a two-man, two-woman team of dope fiends who burglarize pharmacies to feed their habit. Its main tenor of amorphous, improvisational realism, its intermittent eruptions of high style and experimentation (the Wellesian …
Here’s one war that I loved being dragged through. Johnnie To’s latest logical progression of action scenes (and his first mainland production) is this nifty thriller concerning a high profile Chinese meth dealer (Louis Koo) forced to go undercover to avoid facing the firing squad. Captain Zhang (Sun Honglei) is …
The opening looks as tough an hour's worth of plot, passion, and pathos has been compressed into a slide show of rapid-fire images accompanied by a verbose, harried narrator (isn't it Lonny Chapman's voice?). This -- history whizzing past your eyes as the narrator rushes to keep pace -- goes …
Disney-esque formula sports film, directed by Charles Stone III, about a hot-shot freshman on a full scholarship to Atlanta A&T, who needs to learn the meaning of teamwork. Except that the "sport" isn't football, isn't basketball, isn't even a sport; it's the marching band (motto: "One band, one sound"), pointing …