Woody Allen's experiment with the hand-held camera. At its worst, the camerawork suggests the manic manneredness of those jostled-elbow, buckled-knee TV advertisements currently in vogue. At its somewhat better -- at its somewhat more rationalizable -- it suggests the informal intimacy of a home movie or the formless immediacy of …
Rattletrap showcase for Jessica Lange as a cracked Southern belle, pealing one-note laughs from deep in her throat, a wicked mother-in-law with selfish designs on Gwyneth Paltrow's fetus. The photography goes in and out of soft focus, as if it were the work of two different crews with two different …
Thirty years ago, Michael Caine and Steve Martin mugged their way through the slapstick guesswork of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Frank Oz’s lead-footed remake of Brando’s nadir, Bedtime Story. Lower your expectations - gosh only knows the filmmakers did when they set Anne Hathaway (the actress Nikki Swift dubbed “Hollywood’s most …
Robert Aldrich's slightly feverish vision of the assorted dreamers and schemers in the City of Angels, over their heads in hot color and murky shadow. Scriptwriter Steve Shagan's post-mortem on a teen-age runaway, apparently a suicide, is teasingly well plotted around numerous interruptions and postponements, and ultimately is unable to …
An article of nouveau blaxploitation, a throwback even as to the chintziness of the production, centered around a small-time Memphis pimp and pusher, too cool to enunciate, who agrees to accept a kiddie keyboard as payment for a quarter bag, and sets out from there down the path of artistic …
A mismatched pair of con artists (Anne Hathaway & Rebel Wilson) take down good-for-nothing men who've done them wrong. It took first time director Chris Addison and four screenwriters to put this together.
Starring Paul Newman as up-and-coming pool player Eddie Felson and Jackie Gleason as Minnesota Fats. Shoot pool, Fast Eddie!
Bill Murray goes fishing for Oscar in shallow water. In the Spring of 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt (Murray) was the first-ever president to host British royalty on American soil. The weekend shindig was thrown at the title locale, F.D.R.’s home in upstate New York. Chin jutting, cigarette holder pointing northward, …
Title tells all.
A concert film that's also a cogent piece of interview journalism, telling a sad story, with good humor and philosophical detachment, about how the fun and innocence of the Seattle music "scene," pre-1992, got spoiled by the infusion of money and publicity. (Many of the interviewees -- from such groups …
When a detective learns that his missing daughter and a string of high profile bank robberies might be connected, he must go on a mind-bending journey to find his daughter and stop the secret government agency behind the madness. Directed by Robert Rodriguez, starring Ben Affleck, Alice Braga, and J.D. …
A factually derived British comedy about Victorian invention fever and sexual repression, as prim doctors devise the first vibrator to treat the perceived plague of female “hysteria.” Maggie Gyllenhaal delivers a bravura performance as a feminist social worker who sees through the patronizing foolishness. Wilde and Shaw did such humor …