In the spirit of Cecil B. DeMille comes a western saga of unbridled, albeit softcore, lust that caps a sinful 145-minute running time with just enough redemption to justify an appeal to Christian audiences. There’s one in every brothel in the old west: the dirt-poor farmer quick to excuse a …
Fictionalized commie sympathizer Joan “Granny Spy” Stanley, the KGB’s longest-serving British informer, is here given her own fact-based biopic. The film is strangely reminiscent of the recent role-reversal comedy Little, inasmuch as audiences flocking to see the latest from Judi Dench are bound to be disappointed upon learning that the …
After 17 years in the business, Mikey (Simon Rex) had more bangs to his credit than the Big Bay Boom. The Los Angeles-based porn star vowed never again to set foot in Texas, but the universe, and a fickle industry, monkey-wrenched his plans. In lieu of conversation, rapid-fire Mikey riot-hosed …
Steubenville, Ohio, a town famous for two things: Dean Martin’s birthplace and a devotion to high school football that’s so strong, the locals were willing to cover for a pair of gridiron marauders guilty of rape. Once upon a time, the coach would have excused his star players, both accused …
A group of muscled thugs, identified only as “the 5 Steroids,” stow a soapdish containing five varieties of psychoactive drugs in a tree. Tacky slacker Elias (Agustín Durán) finds it and decides to conduct a “social experiment” by asking four friends to join him in ingesting the stash and studying …
A genre mashup of four of contemporary cinema’s least desirable storylines — the Holocaust, old folks, and dementia. This should represent everything we’ve spent the past three decades at the movies trying to forget. But all is forgiven the moment the director’s credit hits the screen. Atom Egoyan is one …
A waterlogged Miami (“the sunken coast”) provides a sensational special effects backdrop for this otherwise routine noir merger of Altered States and Strange Days. Stock fatalistic narration leads the way: “We don’t haunt the past, the past haunts us.” Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman) is a tour guide of the mind, …
A waterlogged Miami (“the sunken coast”) provides a sensational special effects backdrop for this otherwise routine noir merger of Altered States and Strange Days. Stock fatalistic narration leads the way: “We don’t haunt the past, the past haunts us.” Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman) is a tour guide of the mind, …
Brothers Charlie (Dan Stevens) and Josh (Jeremy Allen White) and their respective wife Michelle (Alison Brie) and girlfriend Mina (Sheila Vand) celebrate a recent successful business deal with a romantic getaway for four at a luxurious oceanside Airbnb. First-time director Dave Franco and co-screenwriter Joe Swanberg (Drinking Buddies, Happy Christmas) …
Scott Z. Burns, Bourne Ultimatum co-scripter and regular Steven Soderbergh scribe (The Informant, Contagion), makes his theatrical directorial debut. Like a well-intentioned family hiding the cancer diagnosis from a dying uncle, this justly paranoid thriller brings to light just how little truth is shared with the American public. Remember this …
“There are millions of Jewish guys you could have chosen,” barista Ronit (Rebecca Esmeralda Telhami) admonishes her Israeli employer Sarah (Sivan Kerchner), “Are you that desperate? With an Arab?” Sarah’s difficulty in answering the question stems from a lack of familiarity with her lover, a point of ignorance shared by …
An airborne anti-virus is set to be unleashed by the Umbrella Corporation and it’s up to Alice (Milla Jovovich) to pay a sixth and final visit to Raccoon City and save the day. Paul W.S. Anderson caps his outrageously successful video game franchise with a non-stop torrent of action, expertly …
Produced under the banner of Paul W. S. Anderson’s Constantine Films, Johannes Roberts’s reboot is less interested in Anderson’s surprisingly seductive horror franchise than it is exploring the beginnings of the video game that spawned it. We passively observe the action from the various characters’ points-of-view. With guns drawn, the …
C.L. Franklin (Forest Whitaker) regularly awakened his daughter Aretha (Skye Dakota Turner) to wow the partygoers gathered in the spacious living room below with the young girl’s remarkable vocal reach. What’s rape got to do with it? Everything. It was during one of these late night at-homes that an unidentified …
Sulking Henry Hopper and diseased Mia Wasikowska meet at a stranger’s funeral and fall in love. I can hear the trailer announcer now: “Bayside faces losing one of its own as Slater helps Kelly battle a terminal illness. Gus Van Sant directs this special episode of *Saved by the Bell*." …