Autobiographical tale by writer-director Elgin James stars Juno Temple and Kay Panabaker as a pair of teenage runaways lured from the Salton Sea to L.A. — and an uncertain fate — by a gang of unprincipled sk8er punks.
A bubbly blonde who aspires to be Diane Sawyer settles temporarily for being a production assistant on the Kippie Kann Do sleaze-TV show, where, in an excruciating climax, she is shoved in front of the cameras to confront her current boyfriend and his three ex-girlfriends on live television. If you …
History alert: “Little Boy” was the codename for the type of atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Here, it refers to Pepper Flynt Busbee, a seven year old boy who sets out to end World War II so that his father will come home.
Big bore. Reincarnation is notoriously unfilmable as a "straight" subject, though it can sometimes be smuggled through under cover of fantasy. Dead Again was no more than laughable, but Audrey Rose was legitimate fun, and Exorcist II was great, glorious, delirious fun and a lot else besides. Fun, however, is …
A very little chaos, and more's the pity. Kate Winslet stars in director Alan Rickman's story of a lady landscaper whose willingness to fiddle with man's imposition of order onto nature catches the eye of frustrated the Master Gardener tasked with giving the King of France a foretaste of heaven …
Todd Field's sophomore directing effort, following up his quietly sensationalized In the Bedroom, is less quietly sensationalized, in other words more blaringly sensationalized, and truly more sophomoric. The adaptation of a Tom Perrotta novel, complete with a snooty third-person-omniscient (i.e., know-it-all) narrator, undoubtedly tells us less about the malaise of …
Two teenage girls from opposite sides of the tracks enter a virginity-losing contest at summer camp. Mostly vulgar and vacuous, saddening and soiling. But Kristy McNichol, merely matching Tatum O'Neal stride for stride through the first several laps, suddenly puts on a burst in the stretch and runs away with …
This story, we were told at the end of Nobody's Fault and are told again at the start of its sequel, "must now be seen through Little Dorrit's eyes." (It had been seen up to that point through Arthur Clennam's.) But the heart sinks a little on finding out that …
George Roy Hill's minimalist treatment of the John le Carré espionage novel, about an actress of Leftist and particularly pro-Palestinian leanings who is recruited (and virtually brainwashed) by Israeli intelligence to help flush out a terrorist kingpin. In truth, the heroine's initial motivation is not well established, or anyway the …
Two sisters on an affluent island fall in love with the same man.
It’s hard to say which is a finer encapsulation of the proceedings: Robert De Niro sitting for a caricature artist at a children’s birthday party or Dustin Hoffman detonating a whoopee cushion and saying, “We have to laugh at the stuff that makes us human.” Put another way, whether you …
Brother Nerd coaches his Scrubs (including his tomboy daughter nicknamed -- brace yourself -- Icebox) against Brother All-Star and his Bullies in a Pee-Wee Football playoff. The winner is never in doubt: first one to fall behind by twenty-one points. With Rick Moranis, Ed O'Neill, and Shawna Waldron; directed by …
Laura (Jenna Fischer) has always been pretty and dreamy, but now she drinks too much in her weak marriage to Bob (Chris O’Donnell). As change shocks her drifting life, she must find a way forward with her son (Daniel Yelsky, often stone-cold funny). Michael J. Weithorn’s film flirts with sitcom …
A study in context. Writer-director Jeff Baena adapted this story of three wayward nuns and the wayward world they inhabit from the Italian writer Bocaccio’s 14th-century collection The Decameron. And in medieval Europe, the story’s randy ribaldry among irreligious religious would be obviously (and highly) comedic. Today, it requires the …