Fantasy from the Disney studio, starring Joey Cramer, directed by Randal Kleiser.
Stripped-down remake of Robert Aldrich's near-perfect survival adventure of 1966, about a new plane constructed from the wreckage of an old one in the middle of the desert. Among the things stripped away are all vestiges of character and thematic interest: no more humanism versus pragmatism; no more lingering hostilities …
Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien evokes Albert Lamorisse’s fey little half-hour fantasy of 1956, not merely in the last three words of the title, but in very intermittent and unintegrated appearances of an actual red balloon, the size and strength of a beach ball, every bit as autonomous as Lamorisse’s, albeit …
Airborne thriller gets off the ground in good shape, and while aloft adds another variation to the infinitude of locked-room mysteries. After taking her six-year-old daughter to stretch out in the empty back rows of a double-decker jumbo jet, the mother nods off and wakes up, midflight, to find her …
A pilot (Mark Wahlberg) transports an Air Marshal (Michelle Dockery) accompanying a fugitive (Topher Grace) to trial. As they cross the Alaskan wilderness, tensions soar and trust is tested, as not everyone on board is who they seem.
Live-action (and Industrial Light and Magic) blow-up of the crudely drawn TV cartoon show, from Hanna-Barbera, set in suburbia, 2,000,000 B.C. The actors affect a 1950s sitcom, or 1930s vaudeville, style of performance: purposely primitive. And the dialogue strives for the cheerfully cornball: "What's his name?" "Bamm-Bamm." "Is that short …
Live-action sequel (prequel, really: Fred and Barney meet Wilma and Betty, and a little green man from outer space visits Earth to observe), with an all-new, B-team cast of Mark Addy, Stephen Baldwin, Kristen Johnston, and Jane Krakowski, plus Joan Collins as a "guest star" in place of Elizabeth Taylor. …
“You never,” reads the advertising tagline, “forget your first love.” But you can soon forget a namby-pamby Rob Reiner film about somebody else’s first love, two preadolescents circa 1960. (Stand by Me territory, with commensurate goldie-oldies.) The alternating his-and-hers perspectives would add more interest if there were any interest to …
A boy and his dolphin. Or, How I Spent My Summer Vacation (in the Florida Keys with My Beach-Bum Uncle). Getting seasick. Getting cigarsick. Getting attacked by an environmental polluter and a hammerhead shark. Getting friendly with a cute little blonde. Same pattern as Free Willy and its sequel, with …
Second in John Duigan's promised trilogy on coming-of-age in the Sixties. The mood is set this time not by Vaughan Williams's "Lark Ascending" but by the little pastoral interlude in Vaughan Williams's "Wasps Overture." The hero, first met in The Year My Voice Broke, is now away at a militaristic …
This is perhaps, just barely, recognizable as the work of the Spanking the Monkey man, if not for its gerundial title, then for its morbid fascination with family dysfunction. David O. Russell's move into or toward the commercial mainstream, though, has meant an accelerated, assembly-line manufacture of jokes, and damn …
Single mom Flora (Eve Hewson) is at a loss about what to do with her rebellious teenage son, Max (Orén Kinlan). Encouraged by the police to find Max a hobby, Flora tries to occupy him with a beat-up acoustic guitar. With the help of a washed-up LA musician (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), …
Meryl Streep stars as the titular doormat, a simpering society hostess who fancies herself an opera singer when in reality, her coloratura style approximates the sounds of barn owls being fed through an Osterizer. As her manager/dark cully, Hugh Grant (sympathetic and syphilitic, Flo looks the other way) keeps the …
Director and co-writer Sean Baker’s lavender-tinted, tragedy-tinged followup to Tangerine trades Southern California for Florida but keeps its focus fixed on the margin and the sustaining dreams of its denizens. Moonee (Brooklynn Prince) is a six-year-old spitfire spending her summer vacation at The Magic Castle motel outside of Disney World …