Oh, dear. Hector (Simon Pegg in deadly earnest) is an English psychiatrist, an affluent, middle-aged white guy afflicted with the dreaded "tidy, uncomplicated, satisfactory life," a man who, terrifyingly, "takes comfort in his predictable patterns." No wonder he can't help his patients. Happily, one of them is a psychic who …
The first 15 minutes are a rough patch, and the withered image doesn’t help — everything looks dusty and anemic. Once we’re acclimated, we realize how appropriate the look is, how it emphasizes the dreary circumstances of the players. There’s a grade-school intellectual with ambitions of making a film about …
Writer-director-star John Cameron Mitchell adapts his own off-Broadway musical (songs by Stephen Trask), a voyage of self-acceptance for an East German immigrant and transsexual glam-rocker (or "transexual" according to a mock tabloid headline on display), with a botched sex-change operation that has left him a seventh of a man. The …
Spike Lee would appear to have been watching too much television. Or anyway, to have not yet settled on which of its dizzying array of styles he wants to emulate: athletic-shoe ad, music video, ESPN highlight reel, or issues-oriented Afterschool Special. This fidgety channel surfing will not be stabilized simply …
Dispatched from the BBC with a 16mm camera and a tongue-loosening checkbook, documentarist Nick Broomfield hashes over the 1993 (and beyond) call-girl scandal in Tinsel Town, gathering conflicting testimony from central figures (Ivan Nagy, Madam Alex, Victoria Sellers, L.A. Police Chief Daryl Gates) and peripheral, and finally from the erstwhile …
The directorial debut of Chris Terrio offers a small-world view of New York, where everyone is separated not by the proverbial six degrees but by more like two. A male ex-lover of a bisexual photographer called Benjamin Stone ("Richard Avedon, Annie Leibovitz, Benjamin Stone -- the Holy Trinity") has arrived …
Relatively speaking, this has to be considered David Mamet's most commercial piece to date. Relative, that is, to one starring Joe Mantegna or William H. Macy. A cast headed by Gene Hackman and Danny DeVito, in addition to Delroy Lindo, Sam Rockwell, Rebecca Pidgeon (Mamet's wife), and Ricky Jay (a …
At just 23-years-old, Helen Maroulis heads to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for her first Olympic Games. She competes against Saori Yoshida, 13-time World Champion and the most decorated wrestler of all time. Yoshida has been undefeated for over four straight years, until Maroulis shocks the world and becomes the first, …
From its bold opening long take – one of the most audaciously disconcerting and seductively executed lead-ins in many a moon — director Amat Escalante sends viewers hurtling downward on a topsy-turvy journey through his hellish depiction of Mexico’s war on drugs. Same familiar terrain, different cartel, you ask? Guess …
A slacker gets sucked into hell before his expiration date, and his buds set out to save him. Foul-mouthed stop-motion animation featuring the vocal talents of T.J. Miller, Nick Swardson, Rob Riggle, Mila Kunis, Bob Odenkirk, Brian Posehn, Susan Sarandon, Danny McBride, and David Koechner, among others. Directed by Tom …
Danfung Dennis’s startling documentary follows U.S. Marine Sgt. Nathan Harris through his recovery after being shot in the hip while serving his third tour in Afghanistan. We are privy to the actual footage from the battlefield leading up to Harris’s injury. The camera is remarkably steady, given the roughness of …
Filmmaker Kevin Miller sets out to survey the Christian (and non-Christian) world on the question of who, if anyone, is going to hell, and why a loving God would ever allow creatures made in His image and likeness to suffer such a fate. The chief debate is between those who …
Rock-video vision of Hell: or Surrealism for Simps. Clive Barker has yielded the director's chair to Tony Randel, with no discernible decline in quality: depth perception, that far down in the abyss, is a little difficult. With Ashley Laurence.
Alias H.B., alias Red, alias Big Monkey -- a horned demon unleashed by the Nazis and harnessed by the forces of good (namely the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense), his horns filed down to unmenacing stumps. A jokey comic-book adaptation (Dark Horse Comics) with delusions of grandeur. Guillermo Del …