The first half-hour plays like a reel of Pixar stand-alone shorts: Woody Goes to School, Woody Saves Forky, etc. It isn’t until the arrival at Granny’s antique store that the film finds its bearings. The voice box tracheotomy was an errant touch of genius. Too bad Disney couldn’t have secured …
A pair of bumbling CIA agents masquerading as documentary filmmakers re-create the Apollo moon landing on a Hollywood backlot. In order for a premise like this to succeed, the re-creation must be accurate down to the grain pattern of the film stock. Not for one second did I believe any …
Under the command of director Chris Weitz, this Twilight of the Adolf Eichmann saga begins with Oscar Isaac overseeing a team of secret agents assigned the task of tracking down the architect of the Holocaust. “Weitz power!” “I like Eich!” The mob of mock alt-right poster-blurbs that waltzed through my …
Don’t let the stunning, domed IMAX theater–worthy nature cinematography that opens the picture fool you. After an accident fells kayaking bird-watcher Fernando (Paul Hamy) and writer-director João Pedro Rodrigues’s bulletproof surrealism kicks in, some viewers will no doubt find themselves regretting their evening’s choice of entertainment. According to the press …
A prequel to 2009's Orphan finds 25-year-old Isabelle Fuhrman stepping out of a time machine to once again play Esther Albright, the 31 year-old woman born with proportional dwarfism, a physical disorder that allows her to pass for 12. The first thing you notice about the Estonian hospital that houses …
Open on a cartoon gag: inside the dank hull of a coal freighter the lumps have eyes. Our two heroes — Khaled (Sherwan Haji), the aforementioned blackened Syrian refugee and Waldemar (Sakari Kuosmanen) a burly traveling salesman-turned restaurateur — won’t officially be introduced until halfway through the picture. In the …
Leslie Mann discovers that good-for-nothing hubby Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is three-timing her with Cameron Diaz and Kate Upton. Looks like his philandering was the best thing ever to happen to this trio of callow sitcom yentas. Instead of instantly calling 1-800-DIVORCE, Mann goes partners with the paramours and together they hatch …
Hyped as “the first movie to explore the eastern front of World War I,” this revisionist slice of Turkish propaganda wisely hides beneath the cloak of old Hollywood melodrama. Alas, the part of the iron-willed Christian nurse cried out for more charisma than Hera Hilmar’s dead-inside voiceovers could provide. So …
Formula to scare up a Halloween box office hit: an attractive cast, too advanced in years to be playing teenagers, that gradually succumb to death-by-billing? Check! A supernatural force – in this case a trademarked talking board — that refuses to die? Check! Parental figures conveniently away on business? Check! …
Flashback to 1967, when a struggling medium and her two complicit young daughters opt to incorporate the titular finger-powered planchette into the family act. Mom writes off the con as “healing people through showmanship” until the day dear dead dad’s spirit takes to the board and proceeds to spell out …
Quick! Name a memorable Ewan McGregor performance. Neither can I. Who better to play a college poetics professor who, apart from being a principled sort, is utterly unremarkable? (DJ Qualls would have been the honorable choice.) Knowing a kosher salt when he sees one, a money-laundering Russian mob accountant (Stellan …
Argentine dance sensations Juan Carlos Copes and Maria Nieves spent almost 50 years thrilling audiences with their ballroom pyrotechnics. Their offstage romance was anything but enjoyable. Copes began his emotional withdrawal almost immediately after the “I do’s” were exchanged. Given his predilection for chorines, compounded by a stoical sense of …
At their estranged father’s funeral, the oldest of three sisters takes it upon herself to ask her little-known teenage half-sister — the product of an adulterous relationship that “crushed their family” — to join her siblings and make it a quartet. Was the invite extended simply to spite their almost …