A couple celebrating her promotion (Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel) decide to spice up their sex life and find themselves on a scavenger hunt to prevent a homemade porno from going viral. A foolproof premise for a modern day screwball comedy done in by foolhardy execution. Casting Rob Lowe — …
The career of Sgt. Stubby — the most decorated dog in American history — serves as the basis for the first CG feature based on a true story. Complaints against contemporary animation have become rote, starting with the flat, cookie-cutter characterizations: instead of flesh and blood creations, the pencil-neck WWI …
British Intelligence agent Clive Owen gives thwarted IRA bomber Andrea Riseborough two choices: jail or inform on your own, which in this case happens to be her family. Director James Marsh’s proven track record as a documentarian (Man on Wire) combines with his uncanny flair for creating gritty period atmospherics …
Celebrated for his spooky, pitch-black Rorschach-test monstrosities sporting blown-ink fingers, Richard Hambleton was a formally trained artist — as opposed to a simple graffiti-spreader — who used the streets as his canvas. A founding father of the street art movement of the ‘80s, Hambleton eventually vanished from sight, only to …
We open on a tight shot of Tang Shuisheng’s (Xiaoxiao Wang) face, the world swarming around him. And for the next 7 days, we view life exclusively through the 14-year-old boy’s eyes. It’s the provincial lad’s first visit to the big city. (Recreating Shanghai in the 1930s was a task …
“It’s not about comparing scars,” says Rabbi Capers Funnye, his thought completed moments later by Dr. Michael Berenbaum’s, “It doesn’t mean the Holocaust doesn’t have something to say about slavery and slavery doesn’t have something to say about the Holocaust. Both of them have something to say about suffering.” You …
Much of filmmaker Michael Reich’s glaucomatous experimentation can be traced back to its shot-on-VHS origins. The closest disenthralled video artist Mike Pinkney (as himself) has come to Tinseltown prominence is the iconic Hollywood sign that looks down upon the dog washing emporium where his job is to groom and express …
If homesick college freshman Alex (Cooper Raiff) spent as much time looking for companionship as he did telephonically complaining to his mom and sis about the lack thereof (or telepathically seeking comfort and advice from a plush dog), he’d be the most popular boy on campus. Jonesing for Maggie (Dylan …
Shadows of passing cars sweep across the bedroom ceilings as both mother and daughter greet the dawn with apprehension. Clota (Rita Cortese) hates to travel, and daughter Stella (Valeria Lois) dreads being her traveling companion, particularly when the journey isn’t a holiday. Together, they’ll take the 30-plus hour bus ride …
Clint (Willem Dafoe!) operates a bar in the remotest corner of Siberia, where he lives a life of self-imposed exile, barely capable of communicating with most of his patrons. Lusting after a pregnant flasher as her nana chatters away unintelligibly is one of the film’s kinder moments. Even after the …
A traveling zipper repairman from Delhi scours the countryside in search of a son he fears was kidnapped or sold into child trafficking. Don’t let subtitles becloud thinking. Given the urgent subject matter, plot contrivances, and director Richie Mehta’s untidy narrative structure, a dubbed version would be a ratings spark …
In order to escape an oppressive home life (complete with a dead dog), a guileless young woman (Alice Lowe) unwittingly takes up with a charismatic serial killer (Steve Oram). Badlands, it’s not. Scripted by its two leads and the aptly named Amy Jump, director Ben Wheatley’s infantile black comedy has …
Will Eubank’s sophomore feature is conspiracy-theorist’s dream: a genre-bender set in an unspecified future that finds three teenagers (two MIT whiz kids and a girlfriend) answering the call of a computer hacker bivouacked at an outmoded U.S. Air Force base that plays home to extraterrestrial biological entities. It’s a discombobulated …