A fan asks if she’ll do another movie, a question to which the arresting Grace Jones replies, “My own.” As an actress, Jones is best not remembered for her appearance in A View to A Kill, far and away the least exciting of the pre-Daniel Craig 007 undertakings. The bloodlight …
Breezy cruise through twelve years of musical Memory Lane, 1958-70, and through the rocky shoals of backstage clichés. The characters are pseudonymous ("Denise Waverly" for Carole King, "Jay Phillips" for Brian Wilson, etc.), and the songs are pastiches, and both of these factors dampen the interest. Hair and clothing styles …
Family frenemies, Gracie and Pedro, must put their differences aside, embarking on a thrilling quest packed with perilous escapades in order to reunite with their owners. Starring Claire Alan, Cory Doran, and Danny Trejo.
Misunderstood Youth, as it was understood in the Sixties: embodied in Dustin Hoffman's sadsack slouch and flat-footed shuffle (he is supposed to be a college track star), bounced around between yammering grownups and suffocating lovers, swept up and down the California coast, buoyed by the watery sounds of Simon and …
Misunderstood Youth, as it was understood in the Sixties: embodied in Dustin Hoffman's sadsack slouch and flat-footed shuffle (he is supposed to be a college track star), bounced around between yammering grownups and suffocating lovers, swept up and down the California coast, buoyed by the watery sounds of Simon and …
Writer-director Cristian Mungiu continues his expert evisceration of his native Romania, and by extension, this whole rotten world and the people who make it that way, even as they convince themselves otherwise. Here, the remarkably sympathetic villain is a father (Adrian Titieni) who just wants a better life for his …
Say what you will about (and against) Under the Cherry Moon, but it was a most unusual movie. This, Prince's next fictional effort, is decidedly more usual, decidedly more like Purple Rain: an extended music video, all fog and colored lights, about an extended battle of the bands, the "spiritual" …
Vegas poker tournament covered in a come-and-go mockumentary style. The gambling “types” — the cowboy-hatted veteran, the Internet novice, the in-your-face punk, the antisocial nerd, the tough-talking broad, the bottomed-out hophead, among others — are amusing in conception and in casting, but not so much in detail. The anticipated laughs …
Director Wes Anderson's apologia pro style sua. Most of the action takes place in the pre-communist heyday of the titular (and pinkly ornate) Alpine retreat, and involves concierge extraordinaire Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) and his attempt to claim the priceless painting left to him by a grateful old guest/lover. The mannered, …
A neck massage masquerading as a deep psychic probe of present-day America. Little daily "miracles" twinkle in the advancing tide of gloom and malaise: an interracial friendship blossoms between an affluent white lawyer and the black tow-truck driver who comes to his aid; a jogger finds an abandoned baby in …
The central premise seems interesting enough: a nine-year-old Parisian boy is packed off to the provinces for the final weeks of his mother's pregnancy, there to stay with a couple of combative family friends who themselves lost their only child at birth, and who, at war about everything else, vie …
A modern dress mutation of High Noon with a pro-life message substituting for the “real time” western’s obvious allegory against blacklisting. Instead of a cowardly Marshal soliciting the aid of local townsfolk (including his girlfriend!), storming granny Lily Tomlin races against the clock, going hat-in-hand to various guest stars (including …
From Adam Sandler's Happy Madison production outfit, a losers' comedy below the standard of the head man. Now, that's low. So, Allen Covert, instead, takes the lead role of an overaged video-game tester reduced to living with his grandmother and two old cronies (i.e., crones). It would play like a …