The lyrical intersection of two planets (Earth and its unexpected twin), two genres (the soaper and sci-film film), and two people. Both the soap and science are gently measured out, as Brit Marling (who also co-scripted) recovers from a tragic accident by helping her unintended victim (William Mapother). Her devoted …
A wedding at an Annapolis estate leads to major family fireworks. Sam Levinson wrote and directed. With Ellen Barkin, Ellen Burstyn, Demi Moore, Ezra Miller, Thomas Hayden Church, and George Kennedy.
The graduating class celebrated by making such drunken fools of themselves, the high school board contemplated enacting a zero-alcohol policy. Unfortunately, the ban wouldn’t pertain to four faculty members with a theory they’re looking to put to the test: if people are indeed born with a blood alcohol content that’s …
The sequel to Stakeout goes the way of the Lethal Weapon series: into escalating silliness. (Even the title, copied from Another 48 Hrs., is not a novel way for a sequel to go.) Enlisting stand-up comedian Rosie O'Donnell and her audible gasp makes the intentions perfectly clear. The most actual …
Understated, even a bit muffled or muzzled, wartime drama about Italian POWs in Scotland, working in the fields alongside the natives and living next door to a comely and, by local lights, overhospitable farm wife. There are plenty of things to like here, such as the troll-faced wallflower's unaccompanied song …
Woody Allen's followup to September: more of the same, but a bit better. It's true that Allen still isn't on screen in it. And his dialogue continues to be overly declarative and explanatory, so that characters' utterances sound more like psychological profiles and biographical backgrounds from the author's Preliminary Notes: …
British filmmaker Mike Leigh again looks compassionately at hard-pressed though often amusing lives. It centers on a kind geologist (Jim Broadbent) and his motherly wife (Ruth Sheen). There is much talk, wine, tea, food, and gardening, and too much of a needy alcoholic friend (Lesley Manville), a drippy runoff from …
Painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer creates works of art that explore human existence and the cyclical nature of history. The filmmaker sheds light on the work of an artist and reveals his inspiration, processes, and fascination with myth and history. Directed by Wim Wenders, starring Anselm Kiefer.
If ever a filmmaker’s heart was in the right place, it’s local documentarian Brian Jenkins’s. John Witek, Jenkins’s uncle, was a student at the University of Virginia when he joined Martin Luther King’s march on Selma. Alas, the road to insightful documentary filmmaking is not paved with good intentions. But …
The reclusive author (Jeff Daniels) of the best-selling Me and God, cornering “ten percent of the God market,” slowly yet suddenly comes out of his shell at the twentieth anniversary of the book’s publication. Writer and director John Hindman, owing a good deal to As Good As It Gets (although …
It is a land of mystery and yet what happens here affects every single one of us. With never-before seen footage, Antarctica brings audiences to the farthest reaches of this wild and majestic continent. It is the coldest, driest and windiest place on Earth with the roughest oceans and yet, …