If it was a movie, we'd have shot fifty people by now, trumpets one of the all-girl quartet of high-school seniors, soon reduced by suicide to a trio. "No, this ain't no movie." Agreed, although the thunk-ker-thunk-thunk-ker-thunk-thunk in the background sounds a lot like any and every youth movie, and …
In the '70s they'd have called it Black Bridesmaids.
Tsutomu Mizushima directs this story of anime tank girls. In Japanese with English subtitles.
A cliche-juggling feminist vampire tale by any other country of origin would still hit a dry socket. We never learn where our impoverished hero (Arash Marandi) picked up enough spare cash to acquire a cherry Ford T-Bird or the amount of vigorish that’s owed Bad City’s local pimp. Iranian-American writer-director …
Where did we leave her — the girl with the dragon tattoo who played with fire? Ah, yes, a bullet in her head and the fiend who put it there still at large. Most of the arduous plotting and the masochistic feminism are behind us. What remains is mostly mop-up. …
The second in Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium” trilogy finds our pierced, tattooed, Goth-haired “girl” framed for the murders of two reporters at work on an exposé of sex trafficking. It’s a solider case than the first one, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but still lurid, seamy, sleazy; and the sex-trade …
Envisioning a chain of events that might have led to the Vermeer painting of the same name: the coming to the Master's household of a chaste young maid, daughter of a blinded Delft tile painter, and her inch-by-inch entrée to the artist's atelier by virtue of her demonstrated interest in …
Writer-director (and co-editor) Sèbastien Laudenbach strives and largely succeeds in his effort to produce a finished animated film with the vivacity and evocative power of a rough sketchbook. His bloodily, brutally faithful adaptation of the Brothers Grimm story is fashioned from swaths and blotches of color, pulsing outlines of people, …
Homegrown adaptation by Niels Arden Oplev of the international best-seller by Stieg Larsson, from the Scandinavian wave of detective novels. The movie, like the book, is long: two and a half hours with almost half an hour of anti- or post-climax. In the early going, it juggles two separate cases …
Not bad, for an unnecessary remake. I’ll gladly make do with a shortening of the misogynistic revenge-rape in exchange for a more cuddly relationship between the cop (Daniel Craig) and the girl who fell face first into a tackle box (Rooney Mara). The smooth lateral pans and flat, shiny surfaces …
Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne), a young factory worker, is struggling to survive in post WWI Copenhagen. When she finds herself unemployed, abandoned and pregnant, she meets Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm), a charismatic woman running an underground adoption agency, helping mothers to find foster homes for their unwanted children. With nowhere else …
The young peasant girl Giselle falls in love with Albrecht, a nobleman already betrothed who hides his true identity from her. When she learns the truth, she becomes mad and dies. Against her own will, Giselle joins the Wilis, vengeful spirits of jilted brides who condemn Albrecht to dance until …
A funny thing happened on the way to the cemetery. Vic (Chris Galust) is as compassionate a caregiver as you’re likely to find — off hours finds him looking after his mentally eroding grandfather. But this medical transport driver’s heart of gold is frequently dented by his demanding clientele, in …
A song-and-dance star named Sissy St. Claire is ready for her big showbiz break, her first television special, an evening full of music and laughter, glamour, and entertainment. However, there’s a demonic presence waiting in the wings. Directed by Amanda Kramer.
After the wild success of The Hunger Games and the slightly less wild success of Divergent, and before the hotly anticipated success of The Maze Runner, they decided to let Jeff Bridges realize his 18-year-old dream of bringing this YA dystopia novel to the screen. That was nice of them …