REVIEW: Exotic La Soga Succumbs to Standard-Issue Crime Clichés
A film loaded with interest that somehow fails to be interesting, La Soga is inspired by true events and not much else. A crime drama set in a satellite village orbiting…
REVIEW: Character Flaws Can't Derail Stylish, Shocking Animal Kingdom
A woman well past a certain age, Smurf (Jacki Weaver), is constantly marking her grown children, like territory. Bleached and primped beyond the limits of dignity, she…
REVIEW: Peepli Live Promises Modern India, Delivers Muddled Satire
Peepli Live begins with a tight shot of the face of a man running, it would seem, for his life. Natha (Omkar Das Manikpuri), a farmer belonging to the so-called Backward…
REVIEW: Zesty Porn-Pioneer Saga Middle Men Loses the Plot
"Let's focus on why we're here," is the refrain Jack Harris (Luke Wilson) uses to soothe a parade of thugs in Middle Men. Jack is half conflict-resolution consultant…
REVIEW: Ridiculous Twelve Overdoses on Utter Vapidity
For a film meant to delve into the experience of being young, rich, and messed up in New York City, Twelve rarely lets its subjects open their mouths. Instead it plays…
REVIEW: Risky Spring Fever Wins Some, Loses Some
Spring Fever is a work of defiance, for better and worse. Director Lou Ye's sixth film is also his first filmed in violation of a five-year ban on production imposed by…
REVIEW: Sicilian Girl Turns Real-Life Mafia Tale Into Melodramatic Slog
Based on a true story which director Marco Amenta explored 12 years ago in documentary form, The Sicilian Girl feels powered by unfocused preoccupation, rather than by a…
REVIEW: Stars Align For Zac Efron in Charlie St. Cloud
True-blue star vehicles are an increasingly rare phenomenon, in part because of a tacit, old-fashioned pact they make with audiences: The vehicle will give you an…
REVIEW: Hugh Hefner Proves Friends Shouldn't Let Friends Make Vanity Docs
Director Brigitte Berman opens Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel, her hydroponically grown laurel for the Playboy kingpin's commemorative bust, with two…
REVIEW: Flat Notes, Sluggish Orchestration Halt The Concert
A pleasant dramatic caper that wears out its welcome, The Concert is the houseguest who sings a little too loudly and too long for his supper, tone deaf to the line…
REVIEW: Revealing Smash His Camera Turns Lens on Paparazzo Legend
Dick Cavett is resting comfortably in the hammock-shaped shadow conjoining the Venn diagrammed lives of Ron Galella and Hugh Hefner. He appears as a deadpan raconteur in…
REVIEW: Shopworn Spoken Word Falls Short of Indie Poetry
As the bipolar Latino street poet at the center of Spoken Word, Cruz Montoya (Kuno Becker) is always searching for that perfect phrase, styling his life into rhythmic…
REVIEW: Todd Solondz Mines More Dark Intrigues in Life During Wartime
A man in the grip of contrition, Allen (Michael Kenneth Williams) is re-vowing amends to his wife Joy (Shirley Henderson) in very tight close-up in the opening scene of…
REVIEW: Wholesome Ramona and Beezus Smothers a Spunky Kids' Classic
To insist on any facet of popular culture as sacred is to be hopelessly left behind, every hour on the hour. Recycling, remixing, rebooting, renaming -- no classic is…
REVIEW: Why Exactly Does The Contenders Exist?
Movies that draw us to the theater and then send us drifting back out with our minds full or even pleasantly scrubbed are underwritten by an urgent message: This film…
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