A cinéma-verité portrait by Robert Duvall of a ten-year-old New York gypsy. The fictional storyline, about the theft of a family jewel and its eventual recovery, introduces us to a lot of individual gypsies (and others); and Duvall gives them, in semi-improvised dialogues, as loose a leash as they might …
Although the Dan Brown novel was written before The Da Vinci Code, the screen adaptation of it (directed again by Ron Howard) takes care to situate itself afterwards with a reference or two to the returning hero’s “recent involvement with, shall we say, Church mysteries” and his consequent strained relations …
The class divisions and emotional repressions -- meat and potatoes -- of Victorian England. The aggressively modern perspective (A.S. Byatt original novella, full frontal nudity of both sexes, and the major innovation of the movie: punctuation marks -- periods -- after each of the opening credits) knocks some of the …
And on the pitcher's mound, and in the batter's box, and on the base paths, aiding the California Angels on their drive to the pennant. The (lower-case) angels, excluding the maniacally mugging Christopher Lloyd, are impressive -- glowing, shimmering, streaking things in the sky. But only the very young and …
That's the name for the Scotch that gets lost due to evaporation during aging. No word yet on the Devil's Share, though presumably that's the part that gets drunk. A cheerful little heist film, just right for these whiskey-drenched times.
More disappointing than most Adam Sandler comedies because the subject was more promising: temper control. You would hardly know that that's the subject from the way the humor runs to sex, private parts, bodily functions, in short the toilet. The strong supporting cast is a sign of either Sandler's growing …
One woman's story, more traditionalist than feminist, more concerned with responsibilities than freedoms. The director is the impeccably credentialed Martha Coolidge (Not a Pretty Picture, Rambling Rose), so that's all right, then. The story as such, although not lacking in particulars, is also not lacking in banalities: the brassy ethnicity …
Sure, why not. Directed by Clay Kaytis and Fergal Reilly.
More big screen bird doody.
Vicaria is a brilliant teenager who believes death is a disease that can be cured. After the brutal murder of her brother, she embarks on a dangerous journey to bring him back to life. Directed by Bomani J. Story, starring Laya DeLeon Hayes, Denzel Whitaker, Chad L. Coleman, Reilly Brooke …
Poland in wartime, with few actual Nazis in evidence, but with collaborators, resisters, fence-sitters, and a beautiful fur-coated married Jew who jumps off one of the death trains (much like the ones, and in much the same countryside, featured at length in Shoah) and hides out in the cellar of …
Bigas Luna, the bad boy of post-Franco Spanish cinema (witness the pubic haircut of the drugged heroine in Bilbao), has been on his better behavior for the world at large (cf. the somber religious parable, Reborn). In this handsome production, he has taken over an idea from Lamberto Bava's Demons …
It was supposed to be a three-week jaunt to Mars aboard a transport ship: a floating erector set outfitted with deluxe accommodations, 21 restaurants, and an attraction known as Mima, a soothing rest-for-the-weary club room that administers emotional tuneups to uneasy colonists. But a collision with an asteroid knocks the …