In order to snare a handsome, pedophobic divorcée, a young unwed party girl pretends that her roommate is the mother of her child. Krysten Ritter, who co-wrote the screenplay with director Kat Coiro, is enormously appealing as the baby momma. Ritter and co-star Kate Bosworth have the makings of a …
Documentary film detailing the career of marine biologist Dr. Edie Widder, highlighting her deep-sea explorations, her historic footage of the giant squid, and her work with bioluminescence. Directed by Tasha Van Zandt.
A National Geographic production presented by the Scotts (Ridley, Tony), spliced from short videos made by amateurs in many countries on one day (July 24, 2010). There are some remarkable shots and events (a giraffe’s birth, a boy’s first shave, a storm, sky diving, a lethal crush of fans at …
Were it not for Laura’s (Maggie Baird) inability to fit her faithful guitar in a Goodwill box, the 46-year-old housewife and mother of three might never have reignited her passion for music. With her youngest, most outwardly troubled son, Shane (Finneas O'Connell), in tow, Laura begins making the rounds of …
Brett Whitcomb's documentary look at the music maker Suzanne Ciani.
Two movies in one. The mostly charming and inventive first half traces an unhurried courtship by funnyman Roberto Benigni (also the director) of his regular co-star and real-life wife, Nicoletta Braschi. In the second half, picking up the characters' lives several years after the birth of their son, Benigni tries …
Two movies in one. The mostly charming and inventive first half traces an unhurried courtship by funnyman Roberto Benigni (also the director) of his regular co-star and real-life wife, Nicoletta Braschi. In the second half, picking up the characters' lives several years after the birth of their son, Benigni tries …
There is not here as rich and as varied (nor as incongruous) a cast of characters as in the same filmmaker's High Hopes, limited as it mostly is to one working-class family of four ("I won't tell you again about using my cotton-wool balls!") and a few friends. But once …
No, not a re-release of the Roger Ebert doc, but another well-intentioned romantic drama from Dan Fogelman. With: Oscar Isaac, Olivia Wilde, and Annette Bening.
Steve James's celebratory documentary about popular, populist film critic Roger Ebert shares a title with Ebert's 2011 memoir, but is able to go where the book was not: to the end of life itself. Ebert is unexpectedly hospitalized almost at the outset of production, and it turns out to be …
A smarty-pants comedy that outsmarts itself. It tells of your basic disgruntled ex-employee who storms the boss's office with a gun (ha-ha) to demand his job back, but who comes away instead with the boss's daughter as a hostage and without actually killing anyone. The bigger joke (ha-ha-ha) is, or …
The emotional blackmail implicit in this tedious Biblical spoof, from the Monty Python group, is that by not finding it funny, you are liable to be taken for a bluenose. It could be argued, though, that the followers of Cecil B. DeMille actually have more reason to be offended than …
Preachy, preposterously plotted, ostentatiously overwritten beat-the-clock thriller in which a Texas death-penalty abolitionist finds himself on Death Row. How ironic! How heavily, heavy-handedly, oppressively ironic! Kate Winslet, as a carpetbagging journalist ("Mike Wallace with PMS") looking to reopen the case in the final hours before execution, brings her usual credibility, …
If Ang Lee's adaptation of Yann Martel's novel had been nothing more than the story of a teenaged boy who survives a shipwreck only to find he must share his lifeboat with a Bengal tiger, it might have been a very fine - and often visually astonishing - adventure movie. …