“Documentaries are TV shows that no one watches,” Leilani (Issa Rae) fires back at her husband Jibran (Kumail Nanjiani), a documentarian who fancies himself a “social activist.” No sooner does the couple decide to cancel their four-year relationship than they’re witnesses to murder. That leaves the filmmakers with two mysteries …
A Russian family comedy! In Russian!
The film version of My Fair Lady is a ceremonious bore, and the viewer has Cecil Beaton’s pompously sedentary, open-casket visual compositions to blame. (He was endowed — by the studio and Audrey Hepburn — with the power to basically call “cut” on George Cukor’s set.) Vogue magazine’s Hamish Bowles …
At 50, Kristin Scott Thomas’s impeccable bone structure and diction (French, English) ratify her cool, rapacious “charm” as a business power schemer, in a Parisian complex of offices that recall the glassy city of Jacques Tati’s Playtime. Too soon, she’s gone (imagine Meryl Streep exiting The Devil Wears Prada early). …
Lizzie Borden, of Working Girls, paddles into the mainstream with a sex thriller about a smarmy scam artist (Patrick Bergin) who poses as a world-renowned photographer -- the David Hanover of Vogue magazine -- in order to get women to pose for his camera. His modus operandi is intriguing and …
Tanaz Eshaghian's documentary follows "select cases of inmates at Badam Bagh women's prison in Kabul, Afghanistan, where half are jailed for moral crimes." In Dari and Pashto with English subtitles.
The satirical target (out of the Evelyn Waugh novel) is the deluxe American funeral, and the plan of attack is to swing hard and not worry whether the blow lands anywhere near the mark. The subject is sufficiently ticklish that a certain exuberant tension is maintained even when the swipes …
Director Jill Andresevic presents five real-life romantic relationships, in various states of progression, played out against the backdrop of five New York neighborhoods. From the teenage couple experiencing romance for the first time to 79-year-old Albert coming to terms with his wife's dementia and many relationships in between, the results …
Dallas's biggest JFK fan, fashioning her clothes after Jackie's (though her hair after Marilyn's: does she know something subliminally?), sets off on the Greyhound, against her husband's express wishes, to attend the Presidential funeral in Washington. An uncontrollable motormouth with no concept of privacy, she takes an interest in her …
Call me downturned crabby, but I can’t bear 90% of the current spate of British costumers. Restless leg syndrome began tapping out an SOS just moments after the condescendingly- captioned photoplay credits hit the screen. Pictures of fancied up actors reciting Jane Austen’s prose, lit by a team of Allied …
At a very young age, Gilda Radner learned how to ward off playground jerks looking to turn her weight into a subject of ridicule. “Comedy is hitting on the truth before the other guy thinks of it,” were words she lived by, and a reliance on self-deprecating humor became a …
Mike Myers, with an unfunny funny voice and a dime-store false beard, plays an American-born, Indian-raised self-help prophet (the Number Two man behind Deepak Chopra), whose path to the Oprah show goes through the locker room of the Toronto Maple Leafs. The hockey fan and the Hindu follower might be …
Marvin Gable is a realtor working the Milwaukee suburbs, where For Sale signs bloom. Gable receives a crimson envelope from Rose, a former partner-in-crime that he had left for dead. She’s not happy. Now, Marvin is thrust back into a world of ruthless hitmen, filled with double-crosses and open houses …