Ashley (Abbie Cornish) blames her recent termination from a big box store on her boss favoring Mexican women. And in Ashley's eyes, the reason she lost custody of her son to social services has nothing to do with her being an unstable, self-circumventing lush. Then the idea of transporting undocumented …
Feature film debut of writer-director Sande Zeig, who happens also to be president of the independent-film distributor, Artistic License, which happens to have distributed this one. It must be nice to have your virgin effort assured of circulation, no matter how inept, how inert, how awkward, how amateur. All of …
The old story of the unimagined detours on the dreamt-of road to stardom. This particular detour, into the phone-sex business where acting and fantasizing talents do not go to waste, gets the Spike Lee treatment. Which of course includes the director's trademark shot of the stationary actor pushed or pulled …
Critic asleep, or, the longest 77 minutes I’ve spent at the movies in ages. Australia in the '70s, and the mentally absent embarrassments new-kid-in-school Greta (Bethany Whitmore) calls Mom and Dad decide to throw their daughter a disco-themed fifteenth birthday party. All goes terribly wrong, and the embarrassment incurred causes …
Vice Ganda plays quads — a straight boy, a straight girl, a gay boy, and a gay girl — who get separated at birth: the straights with the rich dad, the gays with the poor mom. Eventually, they find each other at the mall. Hijinx ensue.
Jayne Mansfield provides the former cartoon director, Frank Tashlin, with a useful, cocktail-napkin figure of a woman; and the view of early rock-and-roll, at its sharpest, combines an almost anthropological aloofness and a xenophobic revulsion. It all goes soft during the obligatory "guest" spots for Little Richard, Fats Domino, Gene …
To head off disappointment, it would be prudent to disclose that this effort by Claude Chabrol, “France’s Master of Suspense,” is really not a thriller. Though it by and by works its way around to a crime of passion, it is really more an affairs-of-the-heart type of thing. Many a …
Empowerment trip for a hot-headed Latina high schooler, channeling her hostility into boxing lessons at the Brooklyn Boys' Club, and finding a channel for her hidden tenderness too: a fellow featherweight named Adrian. Trouble ahead: the two channels collide at the Gender-Blind Amateur Box-off. This rough-edged and gritty-surfaced "indie" never …
The title describes the services offered by a high-end Manhattan escort played by a sleepy porn star, Sasha Grey, in her aboveground debut. Those subterranean credentials should not lead you to expect any special degree of explicitness in the sexual activity, of which there is next to none. There is, …
The inner vanity of this outwardly modest movie is based on the fact that it tries to create "real people," a dubious virtue in itself, like "home cooking." These people -- the circle of friends, old and new, surrounding a would-be professional photographer who makes do shooting weddings and bar …
An introspective attorney, in the midst of a high-profile murder trial, falls under the spell of a miniskirted coquette who would appear to have slept with half the male population of Monaco, including the lawyer’s taciturn bodyguard. Mildly amusing clash of personalities, and, in proportion, mildly disconcerting when it takes …
Mathilde Seigner trades the city for the farm, where she must share space with the crusty former owner, Michel Serrault. (It is hard to locate the drag queen of La Cage aux Folles in this grizzled, broken-nosed old goat.) Slight, sentimental, pleasant enough, except for several unfaked animal deaths. Directed …
Spirited daydreamer Lia finds her life derailed when her flirtation with a handsome local, Lorenzo, takes a horrific turn. Lia and her family take her case to the courts, battling intimidation from Lorenzo’s powerful family, along with the immense social and legal pressures demanding Lia to marry her assailant. Directed …
Erotic mystery about an old-fashioned (antique-dealing) English churchgoer bewitched by a dark German infidel: she sets the strings of his heart going, along with the strings of the philharmonic, on first sight. Neither the eroticism nor the mystery reaches anything near the pitch of a fever, maybe nearer that of …
A coming-of-age tale featuring a teen (Cierra Ramirez) and an absentee mom (Eva Mendes). Patricia Riggens directed; with Matthew Modine and Patricia Arquette.