Shooting in his habitual indolent zooms (and reverse zooms) and telephoto pans, through a half-blinding dust storm, Robert Altman here recycles the "critically acclaimed" formula of Nashville and The Player -- and, without the acclaim, The Wedding and Health -- in the different setting of Parisian haute couture: a herd …
One of the worst titles to the left or right of the Robert Ludlum portion of the bookshelves. But then, the original title of the Stephen King novella, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, belongs with When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder? and Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy …
One of the worst titles to the left or right of the Robert Ludlum portion of the bookshelves. But then, the original title of the Stephen King novella, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, belongs with When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder? and Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy …
Robert Altman shuffles together several Raymond Carver short stories, or at any rate several sets of characters from them, and in so doing transforms pithiness into garrulity -- three hours' worth. At the same time he has upped the levels of kookiness and smuttiness, and lost touch with Carver's common …
The idea — as gleaned from the trailers on television and in theaters — of an anti-terrorist action film with marionettes, and animatronic faces for their closeups, seemed a good one: a hipper Thunderbirds. But just because a filmmaker — Trey Parker, in partnership with his South Park collaborator, Matt …
Less of an addiction drama, more of a recovery story, with a few nasty moments along the way. If Thanks for Sharing occasionally feels like too much of a polished and pretty rom-com/sitcom for a movie about the grotty horror of sex addiction (masturbation! frottage! prostitutes! upskirts! hepatitis! bad Daddy …
Ostensible remake and update of Charade, but really more of a private party thrown by director Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, etc.), who uses the date and place of the Stanley Donen original -- 1963, Paris -- to rationalize a French New Wave theme for the party: …
Steven Spielberg's retelling of H.G. Wells's s-f classic. The alien-invasion subgenre, as everyone now knows, blossomed during the Cold War, fertilized by fears of Communist takeover; and it's quite reasonable, quite knowledgeable, to deduce that 9/11 and its aftermath could dump some fresh manure in the field. Spielberg makes damn …
Open-faced Kristen Wiig stars as Alice, a borderline-personality woman who believes everything Oprah tells her about being a special person who deserves to win. And who, when she wins $87 million dollars in the lottery, decides to host a TV show about...herself. What starts out looking like a quirky attack …
Relatively speaking, an imaginative children's film (from a book by Chris Van Allsburg, author also of The Polar Express and, more relevantly, Jumanji) about two battling brothers from a broken home, ages ten and six-and-three-quarters, who find themselves adrift in outer space inside the "creaky" old house of their absent …