The biography of George Jung (don't beat yourself up if you've never heard of him) is just another boring drug story: the easy, breezy path of a working-class Massachusetts white boy, not to mention montage-happy and goldie-oldies-strewn path, to $60 million as a cocaine entrepreneur, and then his swift and …
Leaden comedy, with intermittent heavy drama, about a cut-throat hairdressing competition in an English blue-collar town. An insufficiently good cause for Natasha Richardson and Rachel Griffiths to have had their skulls shorn. With Alan Rickman, Josh Hartnett, Bill Nighy, Rachael Leigh Cook; directed by Paddy Breathnach.
Special pleading on behalf of nonunion janitors, mostly immigrant, in a downtown L.A. high-rise. British filmmaker Ken Loach has lost a little complexity, a little reality, in his move to a new neighborhood: Eisensteinian caricatures of bosses and fat cats; a meet-cute and "sweet" romance between the Anglo activist and …
An ageless (over a period of two decades) Alma Mahler, née Schindler, and her constellation of artsy swains: the composer Gustav Mahler, the architect Walter Gropius, the painter Oskar Kokoschka, the writer Franz Werfel. The viewer is expected to swoon at the headiness of it all: the name-dropping ("Strauss loved …
Sharon Maguire's pale and wan visualization of the unfunny non-novel by Helen Fielding, about the plight of the average, over-thirty, ever so slightly overweight, overdrinking, and oversmoking "singleton" woman in a world -- or in a United Kingdom, at least -- of male "fuckwits." Attempts to punch up the humor …
Israeli domestic drama, centered around a morose widow and four morose children, with the wider national issues kept well out of it. Realistic, life-sized problems, relationships, emotions, crises; touching performance by Maya Maron as the guilt-ridden and grudgingly dutiful daughter. With Orly Zilberschatz-Banai, Nitai Gvirtz, Daniel Magon, and Eliana Magon; …
There might be a presumption of seriousness about a ravaging-monster movie in which the monster stays off screen for the first hour, and comes freighted with political symbolism. (To say nothing of the English subtitles! Or of the venerable presences of Jacques Perrin and Edith Scob!) But there is plenty …
Self-important exploitation film based on a 1993 case of murder among rudderless adolescents in suburban South Florida: a hundred decibel wake-up call to a slumbering America. (Rap music and gory video games, for post-Columbine relevance, help crank up the volume.) The noted still photographer Larry Clark, back on the turf …
Touted as a feminine answer to In the Company of Men. Two women at opposite ends of the corporate pecking order -- a stressed exec and a sassy apprentice, who between them do a good deal of drinking and telephoning -- visit a kind of revenge on a hapless male …
Scenic World War II romance between a Greek island beauty (the Spanish Penelope Cruz, with her unaltered native accent) and a music-loving Italian officer (Nicolas Cage, with an unsteady Italian one). Shades, or shimmers rather, of Mediterraneo -- though it ultimately turns much darker. Slow, somewhat soggy, but rewarding in …
Beastly spy spoof (intermixing live animals, puppets, and computer animation) focussed on a feline world-domination conspiracy and the vigilant watchdogs who oppose it. An overblown lead balloon, heavy on Bondian gadgetry and cartoon violence. With Jeff Goldblum, Elizabeth Perkins, Alexander Pollock, and the voices of Tobey Maguire, Alec Baldwin, Susan …
An orthodox trashy murder mystery boasting, however, a most unorthodox detective: a ranting, psychotic street person (Samuel L. Jackson) with a headful of dreadlocks and a well-stocked hideaway inside a rock formation in a public park. (Everyone on the street knows the Caveman by name and address, but no one …
A prune-faced piece of erotica to do with a dweebish dot-commer (Peter Sarsgaard) who persuades a skinny stripper (Molly Parker) to accompany him to Vegas for a wild weekend on her terms: separate rooms, no kissing on the mouth, no penetration, four hours per night, ten G's on the barrelhead. …