For years, "The Reader" covered the local surf film festival before it became obvious that for every Big Wednesday and Storm Surfers 3D, there are an endless number of cookie-cutter variations content with placing a camera inside a curl and hoping for the best. It’s no secret that few provide …
“All great art has some element of humor to it.” These words-to-live-by come from art collector and publisher Peter Brandt when asked to boil down Kenny Scharf’s appeal. Scharf was a child of television cartoon culture, equal parts Bob Clampett’s Wackyland and what he liked to call “Hanna-Barbarism” mainlined through …
This is not why I go to the movies. This is why I watch TV when I’m bored and there’s nothing worth seeing at the movies. A seemingly happily married couple (aggressive Claire Danes and passive Jim Parsons) must come to grips with their young son’s gender-expansive identity. Silas Howard …
Everything one could ask for from a contemporary sword and sorcery adventure and more, this live-action retelling of the Sword in the Stone legend has the feel of John Boorman’s Excalibur were it written for today’s YA market. New kid in school Alex Elliot (Louis Ashbourne Serkis) comes across a …
That was fast. Two years after its release and there’s already a remake of The Little Death?! This might not have been a bad idea had Kiki been an improvement on its paltry-as-is forerunner. Unlike real life, Kiki begins under the sheets and then proceeds to spend the rest of …
After a contract killing goes wrong, a hitman hired on spec takes a 14-year-old virgin as his “retainer.” This is director William Friedkin’s second film with playwright Tracy Letts; their first pairing, Bug, turned out to be an effective gut-wrencher that never once felt like canned-theatre. You’ll need a Rival® …
Before reaching their campsite, a vacationing couple make a pit stop at a convenience store. Wouldn’t you know it, the first person they come in contact with is half the team of psychos who’ll soon be their tormentors. As if this heinous happenstance were not offensive enough, Killing Ground stands …
A slo-eyed mortal plague (played way too convincingly by Barry Keoghan) reckons on getting even with the poised, chain-smoking cardiovascular surgeon (Colin Farrell) who killed his father on the operating table. His method: he plans on claiming the lives of the doc’s kids via a slow, surreal, and painfully lingering …
A trained assassin (Simon Pegg) looks on as a dentist (Sullivan Stapleton) and his wife (Teresa Palmer, slowly going from drab to fab) kill a patient (Alice Braga) to cash in on an insurance policy switcheroo. Director Kriv Stenders divulges the murder, chases it with a discursive second act flashback, …
San Jose Mercury News investigative reporter Gary Webb sparked furious debate when a piece he wrote alleged that Nicaraguans, hired by CIA-supported Contras, smuggled cocaine into the U.S. which was later transformed into crack and distributed in African-American communities. (The story broke in January 1998, but was overshadowed by headline-grabbing …
A commanding title with a game cast, slugging their hearts out to bring a fascinating, seldom-told story to life. But all first-time writer-director John Krokidas can spoon up is detached melodrama. In 1944, Lucien Carr (Leo DiCaprio’s eerie "evil twin," Dane DeHaan), one of the forgotten members of the "Beat …
While checking out an abandoned building, Eli (Myles Truitt), a 14-year-old scrap metal thief, happens across a decapitated alien (with neck-embers still aglow) clutching an intergalactic weapon the size and shape of a Casio keyboard. It’s now up to the writing-directing team of Jonathan Baker and Josh Baker to build …
The real Scott Davidson, Pete’s father, was a New York firefighter and first-responder who died in 2001 when the World Trade Center collapsed around him. Anyone familiar with his son’s Comedy Central appearances knows how many dark laughs Pete has milked out of being left fatherless at age seven. Those …