A don't-worry-be-happy movie. Complacently anti-intellectual, and a fount of comfort for the low achiever, it tells the tale of an ulcerous child prodigy named Fred (what would you expect him to be named? Chad? Eric? Trevor?), whose talents range from poetry to the piano to math to physics, so as …
The vested proprietor of a dress shop (a slow-burning Paulina Garcia) whose decision it is to steadfastly use family secrets as a cudgel against the son (Greg Kinnear) of her recently deceased landlord and confidant — she insists it was his father’s desire that she stay there — makes it …
AMC Theatres both distributes and exhibits this live action, non-Disney feature inspired by the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. Co-directed by first-timers Blake Harris and Chris Bouchard and starring Poppy Drayton, William Moseley, and Shirley MacLaine.
A return (successful, not just attempted) to Disney's animated heyday, or close thereto. It's doubtful that, as pure animation, the standard reached by Snow White and Pinocchio will ever again be equalled by human hand. (Whatever standard might eventually be reached by computers can never be so impressive.) But nothing …
Plot: a teenage girl develops an obsession with the group of people who murdered her mother, to the point where she falls in love with one of them after seeing him be kind to his dog. Behold the danger of improving your source material by adding backstories. The girl’s father …
A return (successful, not just attempted) to Disney's animated heyday, or close thereto. It's doubtful that, as pure animation, the standard reached by Snow White and Pinocchio will ever again be equalled by human hand. (Whatever standard might eventually be reached by computers can never be so impressive.) But nothing …
Plot: a teenage girl develops an obsession with the group of people who murdered her mother, to the point where she falls in love with one of them after seeing him be kind to his dog. Behold the danger of improving your source material by adding backstories. The girl’s father …
King Triton’s daughter Ariel longs to find out more about the world beyond the sea and, while visiting the surface, falls for the dashing Prince Eric. While mermaids are forbidden to interact with humans, Ariel must follow her heart. She makes a deal with the evil sea witch, Ursula, which …
King Triton’s daughter Ariel longs to find out more about the world beyond the sea and, while visiting the surface, falls for the dashing Prince Eric. While mermaids are forbidden to interact with humans, Ariel must follow her heart. She makes a deal with the evil sea witch, Ursula, which …
The feature debut of music-video veterans Jonathan Dayton and his wife Valerie Faris was put together on the "quirky" assembly line, a product of the thriving "quirky" industry. Dad (Greg Kinnear) is a would-be self-help guru, "would-be," that is, if anyone were buying his Nine-Step Refuse-to-Lose System. Sample pearl, in …
Lupita Nyong'o stars in a zombie comedy from Down Under.
Starring Adam Sandler. By now, that much -- that little -- should be a sufficient review. To say that he plays the weakling son of Satan -- to say that he plays him as if afflicted with a humpback, a clubfoot, cerebral palsy, throat cancer, and limp lifeless hair -- …
A dismal little espionage thriller that proposes to put an old shoe on another foot. All decent Americans, of course, are brought up to shudder in horror at the thought -- and not just thought, but absolute certain fact -- of little Russian children ratting to the authorities on their …
The debut feature of twenty-five-year-old James Gray is a creditable attempt to resuscitate the American film noir, perked up a bit (if "perked up" can apply to something so somber) by the untrafficked milieu: the Russian Jewish community in Brighton Beach. Fine feel for gloom and doom on the faces …
Emergency medical technician Susette Kelo (Catherine Keener) epitomizes the kind of calming curbside manner that a patient in need of emergency care would die for. True story: Kelo, a paramedic from New London, Connecticut, grudgingly took on corporate America, journeying all the way to the Supreme Court in order to …