It was only a matter of time before the human billboard, the bloke on the corner opposite the strip mall blatantly whirling a sign, became the subject of a film. If the goal of this locally produced endeavor is to catch one’s attention, consider rookie filmmakers Reuben Guberek and Luc …
Frederic March stars as as Marcus Superbus, the prefect of Rome forced to choose between the love of a Christian temptress (Elissa Landi) and his devotion to Emperor Nero (preening Charles Laughton, giddily fiddling as backlot Rome smolders). Cecil B. DeMille's capper to his trilogy of biblical epics — this …
Martin Scorsese’s over-inflated cross-cultural Catholic history drama focuses on a pair of fledgling 17th-century Jesuit priests, Father Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Father Garrpe (Adam Driver), who embark on a mission to Japan, hoping to rescue their absentee mentor, Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson). Apparently, at 74, and with almost 60 features, …
Don’t let the friendly greeting and buckets of food they carry fool you: Carmen and her brother Rafito don’t work for Meals on Wheels. Rather, they’re in the business of smuggling undocumented immigrants from Puerto Rico to the Dominican Republic. Work ends, and no sooner does Rafito drop Carmen off …
At first, this “old dark house” horror film, shot in one continuous hand-held take, felt like an exercise in pulling focus — the Russian Ark of American horror films. But the end justifies the means, as this boogeyman turns out to be terrifyingly commonplace. Elizabeth Olsen, the most talented Olsen …
David O. Russell needs to leave Philadelphia almost as much as John Woo needs to stay in Hong Kong. For his follow-up to The Fighter, Russell once again takes the low road in search of truth and beauty amidst a group of boorish louts with personalities akin to the cast …
It’s 1968 and eight characters await the end of a torrential downpour (and possibly civilization as we know it) from inside the walls of a remote Mexican bus terminal. With its ersatz Bernard Herrmann score and pseudo–Rod Serling narration, it became instantly clear that it was director Isaac Ezban’s intention …
The epic tale of a friendship between a young Swedish boy who thinks his aunt and uncle are his biological parents and the son of a wealthy Jewish bookseller who fled Nazi Germany. Shake a tree come awards season and a Holocaust film is bound to fall out. Director Lisa …
Simon (Brady Corbet, who also worked on the script) moves fast. Less than two weeks after landing in Paris to repair a ruptured heart, the scruffy, deeply disturbed American grad student has already teamed with a prostitute (Mati Diop) and hatched a scheme to blackmail her Johns. Writer-director Antonio Campos …
One can’t squawk too loudly about Sam Rockwell accepting walk-through roles in funny-papers blockbusters if they help him to underwrite spectacular performances in smaller projects like Moon and now as John Moon in A Single Shot. Director David M. Rosental turns up the backwoods atmospherics for this stylish thriller about …
John Carney (Begin Again) once again tries to reheat a Once soufflé and instead serves up a flat, cheerily antiseptic period musical. Ferdia Walsh-Peelo (this year’s answer to Freddie Highmore) makes his movie debut as Cosmo, a well-scrubbed Dubliner who starts a band to escape the daily rigors of Mom …
Immediately following the accidental shooting of a young bird watcher mistaken for a deer, the phrase “Weeks earlier” appears onscreen to transition the story into flashback. It’s a rare moment of orthodoxy in a film that does its best to turn aside convention. Neither whodunit — there’s nothing mysterious about …