We come galloping out of the gate, practically tripping over an overabundance of cracker-barrel narration (spoken by Billy Crudup) and characters’ names spelled out in the corners of the frame. In the numerous physical altercations Ben Gibbon (Diego Boneta) has been in since the age of five, the win to …
Were it the '70s, the radio spot would begin, “In public, she was an Instagram model. In private, she put the ‘die' in diary. They killed her friends. They had her dog impounded. Now someone is fighting back!” Any story, even a five-minute chunk of one explaining how “influencers," models …
While house-sitting at the posh home of one of her clients, a yoga instructor’s (Rosemarie DeWitt) husband (co-writer Jake Johnson) unearths a gun and what appears to be a human bone buried on the property. This plot gizmo is dispensed with almost as fast as it arrives. This leaves ample …
This big-screen adaptation of Herman Koch’s Dutch novel was originally scheduled to be Cate Blanchett’s directorial debut. Instead, the job went to screenwriter Owen Moverman, and we’re left to wonder what if. A pair of privileged cousins film the murder of a homeless woman whom they decide to torch pretty …
Cain and Abel revisited as two siblings — a doctor working to save the life of a young victim of a road rage and the lawyer assigned to defend the off-duty cop who shot him — push the limits of their rivalry when the son of one brother and daughter …
Hard on the heels of a recent series of documentaries on noted fashionistas Halston, Diana Vreeland, Anna Wintour, and Valentino comes the least ambitious of the bunch. More time is devoted to the lives of seamstresses than the celebrated fabric fabricator. What little we do learn about Christian Dior’s schizophrenic …
Johnny Knoxville did it better. A career military nutjob (Robert De Niro) observes his future granddaughter-in-law texting at his wife’s funeral and decides a Hangover-style road trip is just what his uptight grandson (Zac Efron) needs to derail the pending nuptials. The script rat-a-tats like a gatling gun misfiring one …
James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain star as an asshat and botched suicide, respectively, whose marriage fell apart with the death of their young son. Producer Harvey ‘Scissorhands’ Weinstein took first time writer-director Ned Benson’s dolorous trilogy — combined total running time of 311 minutes — and sliced them down to …
After a compromising photo of him surfaces online, a high school student (Jonah Bobo) attempts suicide. A couple (Paula Patton and Alexander Skarsgård) seeks revenge against the hacker who cyber-drained their savings account. An emerging TV reporter (Andrea Riseborough) betrays a source (Max Thieriot) to help expose an internet porn …
While waiting to see if the French army deems him fit to return to active duty in Afghanistan, PTSD-riddled soldier Vincent (Matthias Schoenaerts) accepts a routine side gig guarding the wife (Diane Kruger) and son of a shady Lebanese businessman. With more psychotropic drugs in his system than you can …
A fair and balanced overview of the wonderful, horrible life of Roger Ailes: Republican kingmaker, architect of Fox News, and bullying pimp to woman in his employ. (His pickup line of choice: “If you want to play with the big boys, you have to lay with the big boys.”) Early …
From Gabriel Mascaro (Neon Bull) comes the question “Does human bureaucracy exist, or is that just another name for privilege?” Brazil 2027, a time when the party of Supreme Love has surpassed Carnival as the country’s #1 attraction. Joana (Dira Paes) uses her position as notary at the divorce registration …
In a town of Neanderthals (and that’s just the women), Nora (Marie Leuenberger) takes it upon herself to rally the locals in favor of petitioning to give ladies the vote. The most liberating moment in this otherwise conventional tale of suffrage coming to a small Swiss village in the early …
Norma Shearer catches hubby Chester Morris in the arms of another woman and decides it’s time to get even, and how. Joan Crawford, Metro’s resident bad girl, was rightfully steamed when producer Irving Thalberg assigned the role of Jerry — “a great girl with a man’s point-of-view” — to the …
Quentin Tarantino fails to do for slave owners what he did for Nazis in this, his long-awaited western (southern?) follow-up to the epic war comedy Inglourious Basterds. Oscar-winner Christoph Waltz returns to the Tarantino fold as Dr. King, a German dentist-cum-bounty hunter hot on the trail of a pair of …