This could be likened to The Purple Rose of Cairo, but why should anyone want to do that? Dislikened to it, if there were such a verb, would be certain to get more takers. The premise is one of those that inevitably seems more complicated in the retelling than in …
At the start, there's a swift and sustained twenty minutes or so, painstakingly pieced together with wary point-of-view shots and edgy circuitous dialogue, as the finger of guilt turns toward a Catholic priest, who has learned the real killer's identity in the confession box. This places the priest in what's …
I haven’t seen enough of British director Ken Loach’s movies, but the few that have come my way (My Name is Joe, Sweet Sixteen) struck me as good examples of finely crafted social realism. Alas, this time around, Loach and his habitual screenwriter Paul Laverty are working in moral black …
I sensed trouble the moment the picture opened: with a police officer — banging down the door of a violent felon accused of beating up a hooker — turning to the victim and cracking wise about a pair of Chanel loafers. Perhaps twenty-five years ago, this “my gay dads” comedy …
Somewhat heavy reading of Oscar Wilde's stage comedy of manners and morals. Julianne Moore, as Mrs. Cheveley, has the role that makes everything go, and she is fully present and alert in it, and her departure before the final act is a grave loss. Rupert Everett seems strangely uncommitted, and …
What if the King of Rock 'n Roll had an identical twin who was raised by a hardline preacher?
Middle-aged Magdalena (Mercedes Hernandez) has lost contact with her son after he took off with a friend from their town of Guanajuato to cross the border into the U.S., hopeful to find work. Desperate to find out what happened to him, she embarks on an ever-expanding and increasingly dangerous journey …
Hokey thriller about a Ten Little Indians-type annihilation of the guests at a remote Nevada motel in a pelting rain. The hokeyness has a rationale, but the rationale is hokey, too. With John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Ray Liotta, Clea DuVall, Rebecca DeMornay, Alfred Molina, and Pruitt Taylor Vince; directed by …
Don’t blame the Apatow connection for this one. Director Seth Gordon (Four Christmases, Horrible Bosses) steals a few chapters from the John Hughes playbook as he tries in vain to transform Melissa McCarthy into this generation's John Candy. Playing an alcoholic sociopath in a Bozo fright wig, she uses the …
Facile but enjoyable. George Clooney directed and stars as a presidential candidate, a glib liberal dream — apart from his Clintonian attraction to a naïve intern (Evan Rachel Wood), who seems to be running on the Live Bait ticket. As a silky machine of ambition, he excites other tough guys: …
Undercover agent Ho Sau has been working with Yau, a drug lord, for years, but he finds that his job and family are in trouble. Directed by Jason Kwan.
Set in the Deep South in the Deep Depression, an all-black musical from the hip-hop duo OutKast and their sometime music-video director, Bryan Barber. One of the two (André Benjamin, alias André 3000) plays the introverted son of a mortician and the spotlight-shunning pianist at a jerkwater juke joint, while …