The impact of global warming is the subject of yet another series of talking-head testimonials and finger-wagging rebukes aimed at those deep in “climate denial.” As if Al Gore’s conveniently filmed Learning Annex lecture wasn’t enough, documentarian Craig Scott Rosebraugh dredges up one more bucket of cold water to throw …
Foreclosure looms over Wisconsin dairy farmer Buck (Craig T. Nelson). With mounting debt and the land his family has cultivated for four generations at risk, Buck refuses to give up his legacy without a fight. Buck’s granddaughter (Madison Lawlor) works alongside him but dreams of a career in music. Her …
Noah Baumbach, writer and director of The Squid and the Whale, features Ben Stiller as a kind of middle-aged-crazy Jesse Eisenberg (nose up, shoulders forward), a self-absorbed self-conscious ineffectual intellectual, who, upon his release from a mental hospital, wants to concentrate on “really trying to do nothing for a while,” …
To pick up some side money, a raffish Copacabana bouncer agrees to chauffeur and an African-American jazz musician on a concert tour through the deep South. Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali’s deeply engaging performances are the best Christmas present moviegoers will open this year. It’s when the two finally find …
In the treacherous and swampy forests that make up the so-called “green border” between Belarus and Poland, refugees from the Middle East and Africa are lured by government propaganda promising easy passage to the European Union. Unable to cross into Europe and unable to turn back, they find themselves trapped …
Medium-cute romantic comedy about a marriage of convenience. He wants a green card in America. She wants a greenhouse in an apartment for marrieds. They then go their separate ways, the INS takes a closer look, they have to get back together, get their stories straight, get to know one …
Every cast member in Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe’s too-too manicured satire of cookie-cutter correctness in suburbia sports braces. In case this benumbing nuance went unnoticed, the opening credits roll over a tight shot of a tin-grin ringed by quivering red lips. It’s this belt-and-suspenders approach to comedy that gives …
It’s the smart pusher who doesn’t use. At least not knowingly as in the case of Dov (Shlomo Bar-Aba), a 75-year-old widower who after less than a week in a posh retirement center is already scraping a tin cup against the bars of his gated community. Dov blames the eviction …
Inspired by actual events, the story tells of a select group of long-term convicts who take up gardening at a progressive English penitentiary, and take it all the way to the annual Hampton Court Palace Flower Show. Life-affirming, strong-arming underdog stuff; equally soft-hearted and soft-headed; as cutesy-wootsy and cozy-wozy as …
Pay attention to the opening scene, people: a boy who plays with superhero dolls is chewed out by his dad in the world’s most opulent newspaper-editor’s office. Because, as the film’s last scene hammers home with a clang, that’s what this movie is about: a schlubby, bighearted underachiever coming to …
Sammi Hanratty, up from Pringles commercials, stars as the spoiled teen girl whose move from Philadelphia to the country and wises up. Directed by Peter Skillman Odione; with Aidan Quinn and Brooke Shields.
With the world poised to suffer the fate of immolation by the red-hot remnants of an errant comet, the government earmarks a select group of civilians, based on their occupations, to evacuate their families to Greenland and begin rebuilding the wreckage. Among the chosen: John Garrity (Gerard Butler), a structural …
Ryan Reynolds’s neat ’n’ tidy physique, plunked down into a garish and untidy superhero movie. The story makes much of the character’s mythological underpinnings, then chucks ’em for the sake of Daddy issues and growing up. Oh, and there’s a girl. But the Big Bad Thing that threatens the universe …
Overpraise The Shawshank Redemption, and this is what you deserve. Frank Darabont, the writer and director of both, raises an eyebrow of interest for his apparent dedication to breathing some life into the prison genre (pretty well flatlined since Escape from Alcatraz), but the eyebrow might decline into a scowl …