Lloyd Handwerker was but a pup with a VHS camcorder when he began work three decades ago on what would eventually become this garnished-with-all-the-trimmings documentary history of his family’s illustrious hot dog empire. “Angels covered me up” is the way grandpa Nathan Handwerker described his perilous odyssey from Eastern Europe …
Stephen King introduces a group of RV-driving New Age vampires, led by a bolero-topped seductress who goes by the name Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson). But rather than let his sustenance-seeking pseudo-family get blood under their fingernails, King has them vape the “shine” out of their victims. The cult lures …
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 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 …
Or Marie Antoinette: The Last Four Days. The storming of the Bastille and the final days before the French Revolution as seen from inside the walls of the Palace of Versailles form the basis for the latest feature from French director Benoît Jacquot (A Single Girl, The School of Flesh). …
What better cure for suspecting your wife of cheating is there than engaging in casual sex with a stranger? What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, except when you’re wealthy sports agent Derrick Tyler (Michael Ealy), whose one night stand turns out to be the same not-quite-done-with-him L.A. detective (Hilary …
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 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 …
Mark Wahlberg and Mel Gibson aren’t real world men of God, but they play them in the movies. Wahlberg stars as Stuart Long, a hard-living pugilist whose doctor cautions that it’s time to hang up the gloves. Next stop: showbiz, where homophobic Stu counters a casting agent’s advances with one …
The premise suggests a potential wellspring of divertissement: in the midst of a likely government shutdown of Santa’s workshop, Billy (Chance Hurstfield), a rich kid who didn’t get what he wants for Christmas, hires a hitman (Walter Goggins) to ice Father Frost. The writing and directing team of Eshom Nelms …
That it took ten minutes to realize that Félicité wasn’t a documentary was itself a miracle, as the camera wound sinuously through a sparsely populated dance floor in a tottering nightclub, picking up conversations that alternated between rape and romance. And the next 50 minutes — spent following the titular …
Whitney Cummings is best known for her raunchily commendable work as a Comedy Central Roast Mistress. Here she makes her directorial debut, paired opposite Sofia Vergara, for an occasionally amusing look at the science behind our romantic fluffs. Through with romance, a nerdy neuroscientist (Cummings) with a minor in clairvoyance …
A fictionalized slice of Endel Nelis’ life finds a gruff but easily thawed Kirill Käro starring as the Estonian fencer — Épée dueling, not cyclone — who has spent much of 1952 masquerading as a gym teacher in order to escape Russia’s secret police. With most of the sporting equipment …
Author Munro Leaf’s beloved children’s book is a pacifist primer intended to advise kids on how not to follow in the kamikaze footsteps of jingoistic bovines eager to lay down their lives on the field of honor. Disney’s 1938 short will forever remain the definitive adaptation, but that wasn’t enough …
Everything you always wanted to know about Fiddler on the Roof and more. With a name like Norman Jewison, the last question the producers of the movie adaptation thought their choice for director would ask was, “What would you say if I told you I was a goy?” Anecdotes like …