Feminist revenge fantasy about a mutually liberating alliance between a neglected French wife and a battered Algerian streetwalker. The sharp observations of modern life, and the blunt and bludgeoning ones alike, are coated in a debilitating DV image. With Catherine Frot, Rachida Brakni, Vincent Lindon; written and directed by Coline …
The title is colorless on purpose. But by the end -- and quite precisely in the meaningful curtain line -- it acquires a richness of shade and tint. The heroine will by then, in the common phrase, have shown her true colors. An old-fashioned, grandly romantic WWII espionage thriller (vaguely …
Bruce Weber's private rumination, backed by his own voice-over, on his career as a photographer, on other photographers, and on assorted interests and enthusiasms: male model Peter Johnson, cabaret singer Frances Faye, the Rat Pack, Robert Mitchum, Brazilian jujitsu champion Rickson Gracie, British explorer Wilfred Thesiger, dogs, etc. Disorderly, desultory, …
Japanese animated space Western action film, set within but also slightly apart from the hit animated TV series, about a terrorist threatening to destroy the population of Mars via a deadly pathogen, and the bounty hunters hired to thwart the plot.
Teen romance between an underprivileged, highly motivated Chicano (a football star but also a studious student who can explain the difference between "assert" and "exert" in a class discussion) and a spoiled white rich bitch who shows a lot of midriff and no consideration. Potentially, that's more of a subject …
Low-gear Woody Allen crime comedy, down a couple of notches from Small-Time Crooks, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Take the Money and Run. It concerns an ace insurance investigator who falls under the spell of a nightclub hypnotist and has no clue that the serial jewel thief he is looking for is …
The lady-in-distress storyline, unspooled on a smallness of scale that could nowadays be maintained only in an independent film, is agreeably old-fashioned, as you would expect when you know that it's a remake of a top-drawer 1949 melodrama by Max Ophuls, The Reckless Moment. The introduction of an explicit homosexual …
Ghost story from Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro (Cronos, Mimic), set in the Spanish Civil War at an ad hoc orphanage for the children of slain Loyalists (identified in the subtitles as "Leftists," to cut through the mists of ancient history). Cerebral, somber, sure-footed, and creepy (highly evocative image of …
Directed by Stacy Peralta, this documentary details the exploits of fellow skateboarding pioneers of Venice, Ca., in the mid-Seventies.
Suspenser in the tried-and-true pattern of the Boy Who Cried Wolf: a mendacious early adolescent (Matt O'Leary, vulnerable as required) who discovers that his well-heeled new stepdad (Vince Vaughn) is first of all a heel and next of all a psychopathic killer. The police might be forgiven for disbelieving that …
Dark comedy, photographically as much as temperamentally, about a disturbed adolescent (Jake Gyllenhaal of October Sky) who has an imaginary friend in a demonic bunny suit giving him mischief-making orders. (The bunny's end-of-the-world forecast, however, carries little weight when the action is set in the thick of Dukakis's run for …
Absurd kidnap scheme, to adopt the adjective of the psychiatrist-hero (Michael Douglas) to describe his one-day task (or else...) of unlocking the subconscious of a ten-year mental patient (Brittany Murphy) and retrieving a six-digit figure of unknown relevance. No less absurd is the idea that the kidnappers themselves would know …
Lifeless reincarnation of Here Comes Mr. Jordan (or, for a newer generation, 1978's Heaven Can Wait). The gimmick is that the man we see as Chris Rock -- the man temporarily installed in another man's body -- is seen by everyone on screen as a portly, gray-haired, middle-aged white guy. …
The pretty girls and prettier boys of the glamorous world of "open-wheel racing." Vapid talk, careening camerawork, screeching rock songs. With Sylvester Stallone (who also wrote the script), Kip Pardue, Til Schweiger, Estella Warren, Stacy Edwards, Gina Gershon, Cristian de la Fuente, and Burt Reynolds; directed by Renny Harlin.