After she returns home from a grueling round of facial reconstruction surgery, Mommy’s paranoid twin boys begin to question whether she’s the genuine article. Filmmakers Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz must have stolen a look at the box cover to Eyes Without A Face because all they learned from Georges …
There’s something unkosher about Seann William Scott playing a character named “Doug Glatt.” He makes the best of the gladsome dolt who is recruited by a semi-pro hockey team after being spotted brawling in the stands. Slo-mo bloodletting backed by classical music frequently pulls this in the direction of “Jake …
Mx Justin Vivian Bond’s raspy-throated narration frames the story as a sprawling tall tale that raises the question, how in God’s name did all these queers end up making the scene in Eureka Springs, Arkansas? The pietistic burg is best known among evangelical Christians for a 4,000 seat amphitheatre located …
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 …
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 …
Why, Wong Kar, why is every major Asian action director compelled to bring forth a stodgy historical epic? As if Wilson Yip’s two exceptional biopics on martial arts legend Ip Man weren’t enough, Wong Kar-Wai, a legend in his own right, offers this disordered, sorely cheerless elucidation. It’s a kung-fu …
Filmed during the practice sessions for and the actual running of the 1966 Belgian Grand Prix, the immediacy of the camerawork became such a huge contributor to the narrative force that the film still cries out for a big screen treatment. And not the comparatively puny and nightmarish IMAX shoeboxes …
All that holds writer-director Angel Manuel Soto’s three barely converging plot lines together is an obvious, “Gee, ain’t drugs bad?” message. The stories, one more exploitable than the next, focus on an adolescent scrapper who, in order to box his way to the top, must first assist in settling a …
Kiro Russo is the man with a movie camera who, like Dziga Vertov who came before him, whisks us on an exhilaratingly detailed journey through a city and its surroundings. With jeweler’s eye precision, a complex series of compressed telephoto images moves us from the general to the abstract. Slowly …
Has is it really been 40 years since I stayed up past 2 a.m. watching a scratchy 16mm print at a college film society midnight screening? My introduction to the band left a mighty impression, so strong that after seeing the band perform nine times in person, the movie still …
Celebrated journalist Jep Gambardella (played with mournful comic pall by Tony Servillo) wrote a great novel — 40 years ago. Since then, he's been living a life of social ascendance and moral decline, and now, in the wake of his 65th birthday blowout, he suddenly finds himself surrounded by dead …
When it comes to pure visual comedy, there is no greater director than Buster Keaton. The guy literally broke his back to make audiences laugh. Without the aid of a shooting script, Keaton labored on film much the same way an illustrator would on a sketchpad. The resourceful Buster instinctively …
For many, the worst movie ever to take home a Best Picture Oscar, but you'll never prove it by me. The circus acts do drag on, but the sight of Jimmy Stewart as a sawbones, wrongfully accused of murder and hiding beneath clown makeup for the entire picture, is infinitely …
It’s seldom that the prolific Michael Winterbottom (24 Hour Party People, Tristram Shandy) hits rock bottom, but when he does, expect to exit picking asphalt from your eyes. As much as one applauds the director’s desire to work in all types of film, he easily could have skipped the “toothless …