Surface appearances point to a basically nice guy, leaving the viewer to spend a good chunk of Lamb questioning the intentions of a titular 47-year-old (played by writer-director Ross Partridge) who talks an out-of-favor pre-teen (Oona Laurence) who asks to bum a cigarette into accompanying him on a road trip …
Remember kids: rock and roll may feel like the breaking of chains and the shucking of shackles, but it’s not. It’s a racket, a business, a con, a sham, cooked up by businessmen in suits to separate teenagers from their money. Or at least, that’s what I heard. This here …
Don Argott's documentary tells two interconnected stories, but it started out to tell just one. The idea was to travel with the metal band Lamb of God on the world tour in support of their album Resolution, interviewing fans about their (often intense) connection to the band — and by …
More of Gianni Amelio's retro-neorealism: the attention to social ailments, yes; poverty, bureaucracy, the boot heel on the human spirit, that type of thing; but with a polished and precise cinematic technique, and a strong-arm brand of sentimentality. The saucer-eyed, beetle-browed Enrico Lo Verso, of Amelio's Stolen Children, is once …
Pleasant trifle to do with a late-adolescent French orphan (Ken Higelin, a cross between young Monty Clift and young Jerry Lewis), his friendship with Raymond the Fat Farter (sound effects for authentication), his apprenticeship to a Jewish tailor (easy role for Jean Yanne), his romance with a winsome auto mechanic …
An ego kiosk and shrine altar for Pierre Bergé, longtime lover and business enabler of the great Parisian couturier Yves Saint Laurent, and also for their lavish homes, expensive collections, and the massive auction of goodies after YSL’s death. Bergé is solemn, tasteful, vain, and not very informative with his …
American Nightmare about a Bosnian brother and sister who flee the Balkan Wars for Chicago, where the eye-patched brother pimps for his language-handicapped sister (among others), and the sister furtively studies English from Dr. Seuss. A cheerful Chinese sculptor offers her the prospect of a better life. Crass exploitation filmmaking, …
A cautionary fable for those whose dream it is to escape the horrors of reality by ditching car and cell phone and swapping out big-city turmoil for a calming, less complicated existence in a remote Wyoming cabin. That’s precisely the direction Edee’s (Robin Wright, making her feature directorial debut) existential …
Don Bluth, with the support of Lucas and Spielberg, continues to emulate (for lack of any better notions of his own) his animation mentor, Walt Disney, in a tale of prehistoric dinosaurs. But the model is not so much those ferocious battlers of Fantasia as it is the fawns and …
Home-fires soap opera, set in WWII England, underlit and overacted. A potentially interesting historical phenomenon -- the army of female volunteers who pitched in on the farms -- is narrowed down ludicrously to a trio of nubile brunette beauties (Catherine McCormack, Rachel Weisz, Anna Friel), each of whom has a …
A pair of ex brothers-in-law from the Bluegrass State (hushful Paul Eenhoorn and blustery Foghorn Leghorn proxy, Earl Lynn Nelson) are set adrift on a garrulous, firstclass Shirley Valentine cruise to Iceland. Sony Pictures Classics harpooned this understated, sprinkled-with-sugar two-character travel yarn after its debut at Sundance. David Gordon Green …
To do his bit for the oppressed, an upper-crust dimwit (Beau Bridges) buys an apartment house in a black ghetto, and the ensuing jokes thoroughly exploit the situation. Diana Sands, all by herself, raises the level quite a lot. Directed by Hal Ashby.