Marei and Gamalat are husband and wife who live their normal life as watermelon sellers in Upper Egypt. Suddenly, Marei gets kidnapped and discovers that the gang is in it to get hold of diamonds that he had recently inherited from his family. In order to get away, he quickly …
Here’s hoping Denzel Washington’s ambition to bring August Wilson’s ten-play Pittsburgh Cycle to the big screen hasn’t stalled at number two. A deal with HBO generated one picture (the Washington-directed Fences) before production moved to Netflix for this vastly superior day-in-the-life of blues architect Gertrude “Ma” Rainey. (It was Rainey …
William Goldman's concept of a mystery story is one in which the audience hasn't the foggiest notion what's going on. The eventual elucidation doesn't really put everything in place, but simply throws a blanket of approval over the many senseless outbursts of murder and mayhem. Along the way, though, the …
The title (and plot synopsis) in full: The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis De Sade. Peter Brook has put on film his own stage production of the inspired Peter Weiss play, but shock …
An intimate, unconventional portrait of Marc Jacobs, crafted by Sofia Coppola to capture the genius and singular universe of the iconic American designer.
The late Italian actor reminisces (a year or so before he was late) in front of the cameras of Giuseppe Rotunno, who had photographed him numerous times before. Nothing in the talk is too revealing or probing, everything's quite light and charming -- and the foreign-film buff will be gratified …
Animation pioneer Max Fleischer was the first to let audiences in on the creative process; his live-action presence opposite his pen-and-ink prodigy, Koko the Clown, delighted viewers. A century later finds Dean Fleischer-Camp (no relation) sharing the frame with Marcel, a one-eyed mollusk with two red shoes. Rotoscoped Koko would …
Nature documentary on the reproductive ritual of the emperor penguin, the back-and-forth walk of around seventy miles, the mating dance, the harsh winter, the interminable night, the months of starvation, the high mortality rate. It's a hard life, and fascinating. The cuteness of the creatures makes up for much of …
Dick Richards's intrepidly anachronistic Foreign Legion adventure has some good people in it -- the eternally smoldering, quirky Gene Hackman, the puckish, bright-eyed Terence Hill, and the wan, ghostly Catherine Deneuve, who glides about the screen in droopy hats and flaccid dresses. It has some good intentions, too -- an …
Anna Paquin, who gave a great kid’s performance in The Piano, offers a great adolescent performance as Lisa. Bright, snarky, spoiled, and neurotic about her broken family in New York, she drives her decent mom (J. Smith-Cameron) nearly crazy by becoming a drama diva. The cause is her role in …
Having disposed of her cancelled sitcom in I'm the One That I Want, Margaret Cho has less ammo in her second concert film. For the remainder, there's a feeling of going over old and depleted (and dirty) ground, though no feeling of boredom whenever the ground is her mother. Too …
Not bad, if you want the 2008 financial collapse reduced to an adrenalized ego showdown in f-wordy debt to David Mamet. Kevin Spacey is the greed pig who squishes best. Jeremy Irons is the predator who heads the investment firm, seeming to welcome disaster with a shark’s appetite. Writer-director J.C. …