An abandoned automobile tire goes on a killing spree in this quirky, low-budget, laugh-out-loud horror spoof. Filmmaker Quentin Dupieux’s budgetary restrictions never get in the way of his resourcefulness. The human subplots could occasionally use a little traction, but the scenes showcasing the psychotic black donut’s fits of road rage …
It’s been more than a decade since actor-producer-writer-director Warren Beatty stood before a camera (Town & Country) and almost double that since last he looked through a viewfinder (Bulworth). The lure of one notorious playboy starring as equally profligate real-life womanizer Howard Hughes proved to be irresistible. Beatty’s portrayal of …
“Every musician in the world loves Link Wray,” observes Black Keys singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach. “I don’t know why the rest of the world hasn’t figured that out.” Add to that a film that shares its title with Wray’s influential instrumental, and you’ve got me primed to settle in for a …
I’m all about films that posit adults so envious of a child’s youth, beauty, and perspicacity that their blistering jealousy turns to seething hate. (See: Children of the Damned, The Brood, Princess Aurora’s folks in Sleeping Beauty, etc.) Diane Sherman (Sarah Paulson) is wheeled to the neonatal intensive care unit, …
Vanilla noir. Grandpa Justin Timberlake stars as a hustling college student who rakes in kickbacks by steering fellow Princetonians to gambling websites. A trip to Costa Rica to voice an in-person complaint to a crooked tycoon, Ben Affleck, lands him a job. A vengeful cop (Anthony Mackie) soon intervenes, forcing …
A must-see for those eager to get in touch with their inner-simpleton. T1-3, respectively (Arnold Who Else?), and T4 (Sam Worthington) unite as targeted members of a renegade DEA team systematically being picked-off by an unknown assassin in director David Ayer’s (End of Watch) colossal garbage scow of a movie. …
A grimy homage to New York City before Giuliani applied the Disneyfied glaze. Wanted by Russian mobsters, the Chinese Triad, and his former NYPD allies, Jason Statham finds himself having to protect a four-year-old Chinese girl (Catherine Chan) whose photographic memory houses a precious numerical code. The story is so …
On the run from the law, big city gal Julianne Hough finds refuge in the arms of small town widower, Josh Duhamel. For its first hour, a regulation Nicholas Sparks teen romance, until all hell breaks loose in the form of maniac cop, David Lyons, and unintentional laughter reigns supreme. …
Three generations of musicians, representing the past, present, and future of Vietnamese metal, are given their due in this probing, good-natured documentary from the talented team of Sean Lambe and William Snyder (Faces You Forget: Nights Out in Saigon). In light of the country’s war-worn past, it stands to reason …
Bridget (screenwriter Kelly O’Sullivan) is a self-proclaimed agnostic feminist who’s not quite ready to be a mother, or much of anything else for that matter. Given her admitted aversion to responsibility, a snarky aside aimed at the religious art adorning her potential employers’ wall, and a pronounced eagerness to bail …
We open in mid-collapse: an Iranian couple, Emad (Shahab Hosseini) and Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti), soon to star in a blue-penciled staging of Death of a Salesman, are forced to relocate when their tenement begins to crumble. Their new apartment — the former home of an in-demand prostitute and an ex-John …
A Holocaust-themed picture with a difference. Astounding though it may seem, we’ve all heard talk of young people unfamiliar with Hitler’s work. Meet Eli (Ryan Ochoa), a high school student — Jewish, no less — who must have been absent the day his history teacher covered the subject. Enter Samuel …
Gazing up through the sunroof of a precariously positioned car as the rescue chopper above tries to save its occupant at least showed promise of an intelligent use of 3D. Alas, what follows this opening cliffhanger amounts to little more than a computer-generated rehash of Earthquake. (The Rock studied hard …
A feel-good movie that gets the job done, thanks in no small part to the enormous appeal of its star, Chris O’Dowd. As Dave Lovelace, a failed cruise ship director reduced to hosting talent shows in a local pub, O’Dowd is the blackest, most soulful “gubber” in all of New …