Caribbean treasure hunters stumble upon a Civil War-period sunken ship -- "the motherlode of all motherlodes" -- in the same vicinity as a downed drug-smuggling plane. Juvenile aquatic adventure reaches out -- or up, if you prefer -- to the MTV crowd through reggae tunes, water sports, itsy-bitsy bikinis (on …
It would be possible to feel we were getting more than a comedy-thriller if we could feel we were getting at least that. A simple nonstop pursuit -- of a spacey emerald smuggler and a Good Samaritan astrophysicist by a team of Middle Eastern hit men, among others -- produces …
An unnatural disaster in which a ragtag team of professional storm chasers joins forces with other recent graduates of a drama workshop to prove once and for all that stick figures can survive a series of green screen tornadoes. Director/CGI chaser Steven Quale’s fetishistic found-footage approach leaves plenty of room …
Dewayne Johnson, suffered from rashes and wondered if they were caused by the herbicide he'd been using for the past couple of years. Johnson became the face of a legal battle to hold a corporation accountable for a product.
Unleavened Irish whimsy about two motherless lads and a magical white horse, on the run from civilization (etc.). The puckered-faced kids are all right, but the horse doesn't seem magical so much as the beneficiary of discreet and protective editing. Gabriel Byrne is the drunken Da, and Ellen Barkin turns …
Illustration, in a sketchy hand, of the Jon Krakauer nonfiction book on Christopher McCandless, a 1990 college graduate, on the doorstep of Harvard Law School, who gave away his tuition fund to Oxfam, obliterated his identity, renamed himself Alexander Supertramp, and swapped the evils of society for the purity of …
Steven Sondheim's musical theater meditation on the complication, compromise, and carnality that adulthood brings to the fairy-tale world of children's fairy tales, gently Disneyfied for younger audiences eager to sing along. (Don't fret when Johnny Depp's leering Big Bad Wolf lifts his leg to block Little Red Riding Hood's progress; …
Francois Cluzet’s resemblance to Dustin Hoffman continues, so does his subtle talent. As a rich, French quadriplegic, he is all sharp, suave nuances as a cocky new caregiver (Omar Sy) injects his limited existence with fun and warmth. Sy overplays dude-ness, but the two are amusing and touching together, and …
Melodrama combines with a scarcely populated subgenre of my own creation — narratives that don’t get around to flipping their hold cards until minutes before the house lights rise — to fashion a 66-minute masterwork that, in its own subtle fashion, ponders the emboldenment of humanity. The audience is hit …
Charlie (Dennis Quaid), a locked-and-loaded delusional narcissist whose view of life is shaded by a red baseball cap, refuses to budge from his property even after its sale to a young couple (Meagan Good as Annie and Michael Ealy as Scott) has been finalized. Who can blame a guy if …
People who saw the original Invaders from Mars as children tend to have been indelibly impressed by it. People who see it again (or for the first time) as adults tend to find a lot to laugh at. Director Tobe Hooper would seem to be one of both of these; …
Fourth time around on screen for Jack Finney's serviceable Body Snatcher novel, refashioned for the CGI era, the CNN era, the post-9/11 era, the "postmodern feminist" era, the text-message and laptop era. It still functions. An alien-invasion scenario is perhaps not the most obvious choice for the English-language debut of …
Two astronauts, Fuji and Glenn, are sent to investigate the surface of the mysterious "Planet X" recently detected on the far side of Jupiter. There they encounter advanced and seemingly benevolent human-like beings called the Xiliens and their leader, the Controller. The aliens usher the astronauts into their underground base, …