Something like the fifth movie adaptation of Erich Kästner's kiddie crime classic. The 1931 version was scripted by a young Billy Wilder.
A Mexican lawyer is offered an unusual job to help a notorious cartel boss retire and transition into living as a woman, fulfilling a long-held desire. Directed by Jacques Audiard, starring: Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, and Selena Gomez.
The “noble” older brother of an abducted Mexican girl takes his rigid principles to L.A. (he’d sooner eat squirrel than dine with a drug runner), along with a sloppy handheld camera, on a private search-and-rescue mission. Amateurish first film from art-house entrepreneur Kim Jorgensen, a kind of throwback, despite its …
Haunted by the death of her mother, Emily struggles within the confines of her family life and yearns for artistic and personal freedom, and so begins a journey to channel her creative potential into one of the greatest novels of all time, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Directed by Frances O'Connor, …
From Life After Beth to Black Bear, Aubrey Plaza had gradually stripped herself of the deadpan zingers and callous indifference that factored into her early comedies. A fuzzy criminal record is all that stands between Emily (Plaza) and a job that’s more rewarding (and financially lucrative) than delivering trays of …
In the fresh footprints of Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility, another Jane Austen adaptation. And in a word, it "delivers," in every bit as predictable a way as a Schwarzenegger action thriller. Or in a few other words, it meets but never exceeds expectations -- with the solitary exception of …
This “Classics Illustrated” adaptation of Jane Austen is worth a look strictly for the performance of Anya Taylor-Joy, the baby moon-eyed wonderment so perfectly suited for the role, you’d swear she was born in 1815. Alas, actors don’t make movies, directors do, and photographer-turned-fledgling-filmmaker Autumn de Wilde never finds a …
A perfumed, chi-chi piece of erotica, exported from France and bearing a rather vain, savoir-faire attitude about the ins and outs of carnal pleasure. Actually, the amorous adventures of the pixie wife of a French diplomat in Southeast Asia rely mostly on obvious, frivolous amusements: masturbating in front of a …
The erotic events in the Emmanuelle sequel attain a sort of daily-diary humdrumness: one day, a lesbian in the pleasure cruiser's dormitory; next, a tattooed polo player in the men's locker room; next, naked Oriental masseuses in the public baths; next, three soldiers in the Jade Garden nightclub; and on …
Have reached a point in our history where Hollywood can get away with mollifying audiences for 96 minutes with a cast of glorified smiley faces? We're in a hell.
Official Selection for the New York Indian Film Festival.
An admirable film, well cast, that seeks, Graham Greene-like, to poke around in the smoking aftermath of World War II: Now what? Now generals must behave like politicians, including Supreme Commander General Douglas MacArthur (a craggy, cagey Tommy Lee Jones), who appears intent on a full conversion to political life …
Machiavellian machinations in ancient China. Long, slow, and overacted -- excepting the always exceptional Gong Li. There are some handsome images, and some spectacular ones -- especially in the big action scenes -- but there are also overflows of buttery light and milky light, and the scenes of dialogue tend …
Pedantic induction into the hallowed halls of St. Benedict's School for Boys: the dedicated teacher, the troublemaking pupil, the lessons learned, the damp-eyed twenty-five-year reunion. The bulk of the action is set in the Seventies, but it often feels as if it's seventy years earlier. With Kevin Kline, Emile Hirsch, …
Alternative history lesson revealing how Napoleon escaped St. Helena, leaving behind a dead ringer to fool his British jailers, and how he returned to France but not all the way to the throne as planned. A well-mounted production, handled with care by television director Alan Taylor (The Sopranos, Sex and …