Third in the loosely connected trilogy (connected not by recurrent characters, but by theme, mood, the marmoreal Monica Vitti, and a title consisting of a definite article and a noun) which established Antonioni as such a polestar in the cinema of the early Sixties. The last and least of the …
Third installment in the Twilight “saga,” with a new director, David Slade, not to say new blood, only recirculated blood. The ongoing grooming of Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner as poster boys to be pinned up in pink bedrooms across the land reminds the viewer continually, with pop songs chiming …
Irish ghost story, slow, quiet, tasteful to a fault, easy to overrate for its avoidances. It deserves credit, even so, for regarding ghosts as a part of life instead of as part of a mere genre. The photos on the kitchen wall and in the bedroom efficiently fill in the …
Citizen Kane-ish journalistic investigation into the disappearance, twenty years past, of a New Jersey rock-and-roll singer. Did he really go to the bottom of the river with his '57 Chevy, or did he pull an Arthur Rimbaud? (Why else was his final unreleased album titled Season in Hell, and why …
He not only lives, he ages at about one-fifth the rate of the rest of us. But his music (that is, the John Cafferty music he lip-syncs to) has not stayed ahead of the times into the Eighties; it's still imitating Springsteen. The instructional value in this is precisely as …
Routine comedy routine, time-capsulized for eternity. A dramatized prologue is tacked on to the documented concert, showing a precocious little Eddie telling a dirty joke at the Murphy family's Thanksgiving gathering in 1968. Twenty years later in a New York City concert hall he's no longer precocious, but really quite …
A fairy tale based on the true story of Eddie Edwards, a bespectacled, milk-swilling loser who sets out to win the 1988 Winter Olympics by refusing to let various unpleasant realities have any bearing on his pure, shatter-proof dream of simply competing in the Games. (A few samples: a naysaying …
What a joy! We open in Eddy Goldfarb’s kitchen, the 98 year old toy inventor at play with one of his 800 creations, that childhood perennial: the bubble gun. The frenetic energy that triggers the solar powered toys that line the window could use a good winding when compared to …
Rueful Irish marital drama, the chill getting chillier on the tenth anniversary. The working-class surroundings are vividly filled in; and even if the common-folk actors (Aidan Kelly, Eileen Walsh) are often indecipherable, they well communicate the general drift. Written by Eugene O’Brien; directed by Declan Recks.
No one could mistake this, a survival adventure in Jack London territory, as a major creative effort on the part of its decorated author, David Mamet. But nor is there any mistaking the conscientious craftsmanship, the sturdiness of construction, the ingrained artistry. The essential plot ingredients are meticulously laid out. …
Mel Gibson, in his first starring role in eight years, comes back strong, and gracefully aged, as a Boston police officer tracking down his daughter’s shotgun killer. The detective work — the mistaken first assumption is that the detective himself was the intended target — is solid and followable, and …
Writer-director-producer Kelly Fremon Craig’s The Edge of Seventeen offers a verbally frank take on the horrors of adolescence — difficult parents, difficult siblings, difficult romantic interests, and even difficult best friends — gentled just enough to provide solid entertainment. (Especially if you liked John Hughes’ teen oeuvre.) An illustration: when …
What if you woke up inside a video game? Specifically, what if you had to go through the brutal grind of dying over and over and over again in order to reach your final objective, learning just a little bit more each time before starting again at the beginning? That's …