Drama

[7] Matt Damon stars in writer/director Alexander Payne’s (Election, Nebraska) film about a man who undergoes a miraculous new “shrinking” process so that he can live in a miniature utopia where his money is worth more… a lot more. Unfortunately, the man’s wife (Kristen Wiig) gets cold feet and bails on the procedure after he’s already been shrunk. From thereon out, Downsizing is about finding yourself …

[7] Guillermo del Toro serves up a fantasy love story set in the 1960s in which a mute janitor at a top-secret research facility falls in love with… well, a fish man. Sally Hawkins plays the janitor and Doug Jones (a Del Toro regular) plays the fish. Hawkins is endearing and Jones is always reliable, but the supporting players outshine them here. Richard Jenkins is great …

[7] Malcolm McDowell stars in Lindsay Anderson’s tale of schoolyard rebellion. If…. caught the zeitgeist when it was released in 1968 and took home the Palme d’Or at Cannes for its allegorical look at the class system and social upheaval. It also received notoriety for its nudity and bloodshed. McDowell plays one of three outcast ‘troublemakers’ in a British private school. When the self-righteous student …

[6] A 1943 Navy experiment to cloak a ship from enemy radar accidentally sends two sailors forty-one years into the future. Once they arrive in 1984, they are pursued by the military and begin suffering a mysterious illness that threatens their lives unless they can get back to 1943. Michael Paré (Eddie and the Cruisers) and Bobby Di Cicco play the sailors, and Nancy Allen (Carrie, RoboCop) plays …

[7] Robert Redford leads an all-star ensemble cast under the direction of Phil Alden Robinson (Field of Dreams). Redford plays a high-tech security professional who works with a team of specialists to test security systems. When government agents blackmail him into stealing a mysterious new piece of technology from the Russians, Redford and his team find themselves in over their heads — especially when he …

[6] While vacationing separately in Spain, a teenager (Timothy Bottoms) and a woman in her thirties (Maggie Smith) strike up an unlikely friendship that blossoms into romance. Both characters are introverts who help each other come out of their shells, but their relationship is put to the test when they encounter a wealthy duke and the woman reveals she has a terminal illness. Outside of their …

[6] Jodie Foster directs this universal story of holiday family togetherness, warts and all. Holly Hunter stars as a woman who travels to be with her parents for Thanksgiving after just being let go from her job. While she tries to obscure the truth from her mom and dad (Anne Bancroft and Charles Durning), she revels in the rebellious nature of her somewhat-estranged, gay brother …

[7] John Wayne and Robert Mitchum headline this Howard Hawks western about a gunfighter-for-hire (Wayne) who teams up with a drunk sheriff (Mitchum) to help a family protect their land from a rival rancher. The plot to El Dorado was a little hard for me to follow. So many characters are introduced in the first half hour and the way allegiances are formed is a …

[6] Everest is the true story of a deadly 1996 expedition up Mount Everest in which two climbing parties suffered casualties after a fierce blizzard engulfed the mountain with little warning. The film is more of a dramatic biopic than a sensational survival flick, and while that’s normally a good thing, I do wish Everest were a little more suspenseful or exciting. The ensemble cast …

[8] Frances McDormand and Amy Adams star in this ebullient female bonding flick set in the early 1930s, about a recently fired governess (McDormand) who ingratiates herself into the employment of a ditzy actress (Adams). This film, particularly in its first half, is a serendipitous comedy full of witty dialogue and a dash of slapstick. It moves quickly and I was completely caught up in its spell. When …

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