Late in the race, the fast-cars franchise twists open the nitrous and roars back to life, thanks to a standout villain (an icy cool Charlize Theron), a pleasing measure of self-consciousness about its own tropes and themes (what is family, anyway?), and better writing and humor (nitrous is also laughing …
The sexual initiation of two adolescent sisters, one kittenish, the other bearish ("No one would think we're sisters"), on a summer holiday. Very candid and detailed, with extended negotiations required of an older seducer. (The director, Catherine Breillat, doesn't strive to outdo her hardcore Romance, however; and the rudeness of …
The 6 Oscar nominations confirmed my worst fears. Congratulations to Sir Anthony Hopkins for finally checking “Alzheimer’s Patient” off his acting bucket list. Hello, what’s this? It was directed by the same guy who wrote the play, Florian Zeller. You know what that means? Characters may come and go, but …
The second installment in an Alexander Sokurov trilogy begun with Mother and Son (still to come: Two Brothers and a Sister), no less abstract than its predecessor, but more abstruse in the bargain, less emotionally direct. It makes minimal use of the distorting lenses of Mother and Son, and maximal …
Owen WIlson and Ed Helms star as a pair of fraternal twins in search of their birth father. Stepping behind the camera for the first time is cinematographer Lawrence Sher (The Dukes of Hazzard, The Hangover(s)).
A stick-up man (mitigating circumstance: he only robs drug dealers) gets stuck with his two abandoned children, escapees of an abusive foster-care facility, en route to his next planned heist in New Orleans, with the cops of five states in hot pursuit. The movie has a bam-bam-bam rhythm, and a …
A film à clef concerned with the suicide of a risk-taking French film producer modelled on Humbert Balsan. We are thrust straightaway into the flow of life, eavesdroppers, voyeurs on a harried shaggy-haired wheeler and dealer (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing) juggling two mobile phones on the sidewalk and in the car, …
Charles Shyer's remake of the Vincente Minnelli comedy, but broadened as though by rolling pin, and out of concern that anyone seeing the 1950 original might not be able to recognize it as a comedy. ("Welcome to the Nineties," says the swishy, adenoidal, German-accented wedding co-ordinator.) Steve Martin falling into …
Proud father Stanley Banks remembers the day his daughter, Kay, got married. Starting when she announces her engagement through to the wedding itself, we learn of all the surprises and disasters along the way. Directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Spencer Tracy, Joan Bennett, Elizabeth Taylor, Don Taylor, Billie Burke.
The original Father of the Bride -- meaning the 1950 one, not the 1991 one -- had a better name for its sequel, Father's Little Dividend. But dividend has three syllables in it, and its definition doesn't denote sequel, so.... Besides which, Part II isn't a literal remake of the …
The cinematic equivalent of scribbling and a waste of the $10,000 it cost to make. For your entertainment pleasure, a gay serial rapist/killer named Chris Fuchman performs acts of oral castration and other atrocities in this godawful alleged satire. Four of the film’s five stars and writers share director’s credit …
Off-screen buddies Robin Williams and Billy Crystal finally find a project that allows them to work together on the big screen. How nice for them. But what's in it for the rest of us? Another dull-witted Hollywood plunder of the commercial French cinema, in specific Francis Veber's Les Compères. The …