[5] Ridley Scott directs Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe in a story about a CIA agent (DiCaprio) trying to bust a terrorist leader in Jordan while having his chain yanked by both the Jordan and American governments. I could also describe it as two hours of watching Leonardo DiCaprio talk on his cell phone. But I won’t be quite that snarky. This time. Body of …
[5] While I’d rather Terrence Malick make a live-action Pocahontas movie than Disney, the results are still far from amazing… and a wee bit boring. Malick focuses on a love triangle between our girl Poca (Q’orianka Kilcher), John Smith (Colin Farrell), and John Rolfe (Christian Bale). The first half of the movie is like Malick’s Days of Heaven, with Kilcher and Farrell running around in …
[4] David Mickey Evans, the director of Radio Flyer and The Sandlot turns in a teen sex comedy that reeks of ’90s made-for-cable or direct-to-video. Three high school dudes decide they can make a lot of money by filming a porno without their school or their parents finding out, and without getting murdered by a rival team of professional pornographers. Whackiness ensues. What Barely Legal …
[7] A frantic man (Ezra Godden) stumbles into a Spanish coastal village where the inhabitants are metamorphosing into sea creatures. As far as Lovecraft adaptations from Stuart Gordon (From Beyond, Re-Animator) go, I like this one best. The script is tight and Gordon demonstrates remarkable directing chops in sustaining tension and suspense for what is, for the most part, one big chase. Godden is engaging …
[4] The Coen Brothers run hot and cold with me. Sometimes I get them, sometimes I don’t. This is one of the times that I don’t, and I can only figure it’s because the comedy is too subdued and the point is too on the nose. Michael Stuhlbarg stars as a man whose claustrophobic suburban life is unraveling. His wife has decided to divorce him …
[6] Ridley Scott directs from a script by Steven Zaillian this true story about a New York detective (Russell Crowe) and a drug lord (Denzel Washington) whose paths cross in the 1970s to expose deep-rooted corruption in the police force. The film balances the screen time between Washington and Crowe’s characters, so we get both the plight of the humble man and the rise & fall …
[6] My main takeaway from The Banger Sisters is this: Damn, Goldie Hawn is awesome. She shares the top billing with Susan Sarandon here, but it’s really Goldie’s movie, and she carries it superbly. The film is about old friends reuniting and overcoming their differences after decades apart. Hawn plays the one who hasn’t changed much from their old Bohemian ways, while Sarandon plays the one …
[6] Zack Snyder (300, Man of Steel) made his feature directorial debut with this remake of George Romero’s 1978 classic zombie sequel. This time around the rag-tag team of survivors holed up in a mall during the zombie apocalypse includes Sarah Polley (The Sweet Hereafter) and Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction), but you don’t get to know either of them nearly as well as you got …
[5] Director David Mackenzie (Hell or High Water) adapts Alexander Trocchi’s novel about a Scottish drifter (Ewan McGregor) who falls in with a family living and working on a river barge, all while hiding what he knows about an alleged murder being publicized in the local papers. Mackenzie captures a suitably dreary tone for the movie, but it’s a challenging story to get into. McGregor’s …
[6] So, fifteen minutes into The Fountain, you get a bald man sitting in a snow globe talking to a tree while drifting through space. At that point, you either go with writer/director Darren Aronofsky (Pi, Requiem for a Dream), or you shut the movie off to make the pain go away. Fortunately, that initial leap of faith is the hardest. I started to dig …
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