The 1966 sci-fi joker Mars Needs Women is Disneyfied by director and writer Simon Wells. As pop entertainment, his movie is slick but also superior, a charming 3-D animation about a boy who goes to Mars to rescue his abducted mom. Kids probably won’t get the nods to Reagan and …
Documentary portrait of two professional nannies, both born in the first years of the century, both without children of their own, but in other ways quite unalike: Martha, the German Catholic, trained as a baby nurse, and a rigid disciplinarian by temperament and philosophy (preferred instrument of enforcement: the wooden …
A solemnly instructional coming-of-age in a Czech-German border town in the late 1930s, under the guiding hand of an indulgent Jewish uncle ("He'll have a pounding headache, and be the wiser for it"), who has illustrated editions of Balzac and Boccaccio, an unfaithful wife, and a loyal housekeeper who later …
Martha strives to recover from a grungy cult group. Director Sean Durkin intercuts timeframes and creates a twilight sadness. The cult leader (John Hawkes) sings like Charles Manson trying to be Leonard Cohen, and as part of Martha’s “cleansing” he provides rape. As morose, inarticulate Martha, Elizabeth Olsen (sister of …
Filmmaker Tora Mårtens documents the lives of Martha Nabwire and Niki Tsappos, the first two women ever to become World Champions in Hip Hop.
When MMA rising star Ibby “The Prince” Bakran shines in a local fight, the world’s largest promotion company offers him a deal he can’t refuse. Now aligned with the sport’s top developing athletes, Ibby has a clear path to becoming great. Consumed with the limelight and all it has to …
Kids: stay in school, especially if you plan on becoming an astronaut. When a freak accident (wind-loosed antenna piercing bio-monitor) leads to his being stranded on the red planet, astro-botanist Matt Damon decides he ain't got time to muse on fate, the fragility of existence, or man's place in the …
Sci-fi writer (and widower) adopts a problem child who believes he's from another planet. The means of expression are hackneyed and mawkish, and John Cusack's emotional reserves run only puddle-deep, but the warm, clean, well-lit photography of Robert Yeoman (on whose talents Wes Anderson holds no monopoly) will give the …
An invasion of a billion aliens: human actors with green greasepaint on their faces and the personalities of the animated pests in a Raid commercial (e.g., buzzing around a Buddhist meditator with a leaf-blower). They manage thoroughly to annoy every human being on earth. Most particularly the attending moviegoer. Anita …
Vampirism in Pittsburgh. The culprit is a sexually repressed teenager who facilitates his dirty work with the modern conveniences of syringe and razor blade, and who disburdens his guilts over the phone to a radio talk-show host who dubs him "The Count." George A. Romero's always promising but never satisfying …
Two factors influenced the seafaring and soon-to-be self-educated Martin Eden’s (Luca Marinelli) decision to make the written word his stock in trade: the escape from his proletarian surroundings that it offered, and a shot at impressing Elena (Jessica Cressy), the learned but terminally-dullish sister of a boy he happened to …
You are already supposed to know, possibly from the comedian's earlier concert film, You So Crazy, that the last word of the title is actually a contraction of three words: run, tell that. He does have some new things to tell since then: a couple of arrests and a coma. …
The film explores the assassination of Ninoy Aquino on August 21, 1983, three years before the events of Maid in Malacañan. Based on a fictionalized account of the Marcos family's story before and after the People Power Revolution in 1986, the film explores what happened to the family before and …
Freud asked, “What does a woman want?” And Marvel seemed to have found an answer with Captain Marvel, which made a billion dollars telling the story of a gaslit supergal who rose up and triumphed over all the dudes who ever told her she wasn’t strong enough to play with …