When Jorge Semprun first wrote a screenplay about a Spanish Civil War fugitive living in French exile and carrying on the good fight, and Yves Montand took the role, the outcome was Alain Resnais's La Guerre Est Finie and very fine. Both author and star have tried to copy themselves …
Another cobblestone in the well-intentioned path to cinema hell. This earnest and grievously routine outcast-comes-of-age drama tells the tale of a taciturn Aboriginal burn victim (Joel Evans), smitten by the prettiest girl in school (Chloe Rose) and taunted with cigarette lighters by the home room bully (Adam Butcher). Things quickly …
Liam (Daryl McCormack), an aspiring and ambitious young writer, eagerly accepts a tutoring position at the family estate of his idol, renowned author J.M. Sinclair (Academy Award nominee Richard E. Grant). But soon, Liam realizes that he is ensnared in a web of family secrets, resentment, and retribution. Sinclair, his …
Masaya Kakei is a university student, but he attends a school that's not his ideal school. His days are generally gloomy. One day, he receives a letter from serial killer Yamato Haimura, who was convicted for eight murders and received the death penalty. Back when Yamato was committing his murders, …
What a bummer! A college freshman returns home for Christmas vacation to find his best high-school friend on a downhill slide of drugs and debts and sexual degradation, and his ex-girlfriend being dragged down behind him. ("You don't look happy," he tells the girl, who promptly corrects his priorities: "But …
Isabelle Adjani driven by revenge -- driven by it for over two hours, before she finds out she has had the wrong driver all along. She flounces around as if out of whatever is the French equivalent of Erskine Caldwell, wears lots of outfits with ruffles and polka dots, cries …
Perfunctory male bonding between new cop partners (one of them's suicidal, the other is fifty, gray, and domestic), but some energetic action near the end, not counting the hand-to-hand stuff, confusingly shot to cover up Mel Gibson's physical limitations. The star, as a matter of fact, finishes a poor fifth …
With the male bonding solidified in the first outing (and Mel Gibson's suicidal tendencies straightened out), all that's left for the sequel is male buddying -- casual, smug, exhibitionistic (even to the point of some James Bond-ian puns and wisecracks: "Nailed 'em both," announces Danny Glover to nobody but the …
This series is an anomaly among movie series in that it has altered its original course radically. What started out as something to do with a suicidal loner cop who was coaxed back to humanity with the help of his new, family-man partner has by now become an out-and-out comedy …
Any rising above expectations, any improvement over the past two sequels, is not because new recruit Chris Rock has upped the level of comedy, which was already on overflow, but rather because Hong Kong action star Jet Li has upped the level of melodrama. His stare-down of Mel Gibson on …
Three years after James Blackledge’s death, his mother Margaret (Diane Lane) witnesses both her young grandson and former daughter-in-law Lorna (Kayli Carter) winding up on the receiving end of a public smackdown from James’ replacement, Donnie Weboy (Will Brittain). A wellness call from Margaret is provocation enough to send Donnie …
True story, crime story, sob story, about an epileptic halfwit (mentally damaged in the Blitz?) who falls in with a bad crowd, takes part in the murder of a London bobby. (When he yelled "Let him have it," he meant "Give the copper the gun," not "Plug him with it.") …
A Palestinian-born Israeli citizen living in Jerusalem who receives an invitation to his brother’s wedding forcing him to return to the Arab village where he grew up. After the wedding finishes, with no explanation, Sami's hometown is put under a military blockade lockdown by Israeli soldiers. When chaos erupts overnight …
Unpretentious feature debut of the much-decorated TV-ad director, Joe Pytka: a comedy about a day at the races, a once-in-a-lifetime day for a nickel-and-dime compulsive gambler. Richard Dreyfuss acts as if he could carry the movie all by himself, but in reality he gets a lot of help from a …