Billed as a movie lover’s dream for a reason: the eye hasn’t seen this much color on screen since Vincente Minnelli passed. The songs and musical numbers are lively, the cast attractive, all attempts to transform city streets into expressionistically lit studio backlots successful, and the ending decidedly downbeat. And …
Surface appearances point to a basically nice guy, leaving the viewer to spend a good chunk of Lamb questioning the intentions of a titular 47-year-old (played by writer-director Ross Partridge) who talks an out-of-favor pre-teen (Oona Laurence) who asks to bum a cigarette into accompanying him on a road trip …
A cautionary fable for those whose dream it is to escape the horrors of reality by ditching car and cell phone and swapping out big-city turmoil for a calming, less complicated existence in a remote Wyoming cabin. That’s precisely the direction Edee’s (Robin Wright, making her feature directorial debut) existential …
A pair of ex brothers-in-law from the Bluegrass State (hushful Paul Eenhoorn and blustery Foghorn Leghorn proxy, Earl Lynn Nelson) are set adrift on a garrulous, firstclass Shirley Valentine cruise to Iceland. Sony Pictures Classics harpooned this understated, sprinkled-with-sugar two-character travel yarn after its debut at Sundance. David Gordon Green …
It’s a case of foreshadowing from the grave when the first line of George Michael’s titular tune provides the basic framework for an entire feature. Small screen enchantress Emilia Clarke teams with Henry Golding and Michelle Yeogh, stars of last year’s unexpected big screen sensation, Crazy Rich Asians, for romantic …
Four years up the road, and a new branch of law enforcement run out of out D.C. is about to take the training wheels off its latest enterprise: the American Peace Initiative, a signal that acts as a “synaptic blocker,” prohibiting people from intentionally performing unlawful acts. A trio of …
Things were going so well for Nell (Ashley Bell) in the group home where she was deposited after all the mishigas that went down in the first Last Exorcism. But the demon Abalam refuses to allow Nell to move on. For 75 minutes, Ed Gass-Donnelly's film chugs along with the …
It starts on a note of what appears to be reverent satire — vomiting pea soup, a cry of “the power of God compels me” — and quickly delivers what is quite simply one of the most inept horror films since we lost Ed Wood. What drew me to this …
When was the last time that three, count 'em, three war movies, set during three different wars, played town in the same week? First, thee's World War I as depicted in 1917, followed by World War II and Quezon's Game, and now the true-life story of Vietnam vet, Airman William …
Harvey Keitel plays an aging Mafia don who decides the time is right to train his middle-aged, mildly retarded son (writer/director Hyung-rae Shim) as his successor. The only thing that kept me watching this period-genre parody was the schizophrenic production design — it’s impossible to pinpoint in what part of …
There is enough handwritten communication exchanged in Shunji Iwai’s deceptively uncomplicated romance to fill a small post office branch. And no junk mail! This archly romantic drama based on memory and mistaken identity opens, fittingly enough, at a funeral followed immediately by a high school reunion. Zhihua (Zhou Xun), unable …
With Eastwood, Stallone, and Schwarzenegger lighting up screens in the ‘90s, one had very little time to devote to the mulletted likes of ancillary action heroes Chuck Norris or Jean-Claude Van Damme. The bar was reset for the latter with the release of JCVD. With one foot extended high over …
Disclaimer: any film featuring both Brian Cox and Udo Kier automatically earns a recommendation. Three years have passed, and just when Sam (Zach Avery) believes he’d come to terms with the shooting of his late girlfriend (Samara Weaving), her doppelgänger — give or take a blonde dye job — appears, …
It’s been a grand year for Edgar Wright, with back-to-back releases of his two most stylistically intuitive works to date: the documentary The Sparks Brothers and this sumptuously mod throwback to the swinging’ 60s when Carnaby Street was the style center of the world. It’s a period Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) …
“They’re real sticklers for the rules these days, not like in my time,” says Errol Flynn (Kevin Kline) while effortlessly trying to put across Hollywood’s attitude towards May/December romances to star-struck Florence Aadland (Susan Sarandon), the mother of his 15-year-old mistress, Beverly (Dakota Fanning). The Last of Robin Hood chronicles …