Josh Trank, who smartly darkened up the superhero genre with his small-scale angry-teen film Chronicle, goes big, dumbs down, and ultimately gets overwhelmed with this reboot about three fine actors (Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan) in search of a paycheck. Sorry, about four young people given astonishing powers …
Wes Anderson’s wised-up children’s film, a labor-intensive stop-motion animated adaptation of the Roald Dahl animal tale (reportedly he never visited the London set, but directed from Paris by E-mail) about a vulpine sophisticate who moves up in the world — out of a hole and into a tree — but …
Animation is obviously a favorable, and as yet underexplored, way to do s-f and fantasy subjects -- a more direct and less compromising outlet for the imagination than is offered through traditional live-action special effects. And this prize-winning French-Czech cartoon by René Laloux, about the battle for global supremacy between …
They don't make 'em like this any more. René Laloux directs this story of a world where humanity is considered a lower life form.
Kiddie-matinee science fiction: an atomic submarine and crew are reduced to germ-size and are injected into a scientist's bloodstream in order to perform a delicate brain operation from the inside. The ridiculousness reaches dizzying heights as the special-effects department comes up with what look like grade-school demonstration models, in papier-maché …
A pre-op transsexual’s (Daniele Vega) word begins caving in after the death of her divorced, much-older boyfriend, mostly because it gives his largely intolerant family the opportunity to make her life miserable. Vega’s performance is riveting, but writer and co-director Sebastián Leilo’s use of sex and gender to shape his …
For those who like their fantasies rated PG-13.
An anxious law school dropout (Matthew Shear) stumbles into a job babysitting his psychiatrist's three granddaughters and falls for the girls' mother (Amanda Peet), an actress in a rocky marriage. Co-starring Alessandro Nivola, Judd Hirsch, Bob Balaban, Andrea Martin, Zosia Mamet, and Holland Taylor.
The movie equivalent of the kind of novel that no self-respecting literary critic would condescend to notice: one of those sweeping, sprawling, flag-waving, button-popping, bodice-ripping, lusty, busty historical romances that have "best-seller" written literally all over them — all over their paperback covers at any rate, in close proximity to …
Wim Wenders's first sequel. The work which it continues, after a six-year interruption, is Wings of Desire, the absolute last of the director's movies to warrant continuation, excepting perhaps The Scarlet Letter. But here they come again, those invisible, colorblind, mind-reading, ineffectual angels on patrol in a black-and-white Berlin. Bruno …
Amazing but true story of Cold War espionage, a KGB agent passing state secrets to a French amateur stationed in Moscow, early Eighties. Amazing but true but amazingly, truly unsuspenseful and dull. But earnest and diligent. The two principals are played by Emir Kusturica and Guillaume Canet (film directors in …
For her second feature, writer-director Lulu Wang (Posthumous) tackles the dubious tradition of lying to a family member in order to safeguard them from the truth. When Nai Nai (Shuzhen Zhou) is given three months to live, her family opts for what they consider to be the most humane send …
Paris 1941. François Mercier is an ordinary man whose only goal is to start a family with Blanche, the woman he loves.François works for Mr. Haffmann, a talented Jewish jeweler. Under the German occupation, the employer and employee are forced to strike a deal which, over the following months, will …
Cultural-exchange item from China. On the receiving end, it demonstrates that trendy cinematography can freely cross the Pacific and that the doors of Mainland China are wide open to it: the gently teetering Steadicam, the oozing light, the muted color, the soft focus, the powdery atmosphere, etc. Half the time …