As unrepentantly grandiose and ludicrous as its title, Luca Guadagnino’s visually ravishing third feature suggests an epic that Visconti and Sirk might have made after they finished watching Vertigo and reading Madame Bovary while gorging themselves on aphrodisiacs. That it works so well — despite frequently risible dialogue (“Happy is…
Macho meets homo in the laudable but terrible La Mission. Watered-down Jungian analysis meets a GLAAD-approved weepie in Peter Bratt’s second feature, starring brother Benjamin (who also produces) as a swaggering, neck-tattooed macho who will finally realize the damage his rock-hard masculinity has caused during a funeral for a teenage…
Another movie, not as awful or deluded as this one, might one day find better use for the easygoing vibe between Queen Latifah and Common, the stars of Just Wright, a romantic comedy (for the ladies) with basketball and cameoing NBA players in it (for the fellas). That absolutely no…
The script, costumes, and props of The Last Song work hard to establish Miley Cyrus’ dramatic-role bona fides as the 17-year-old crosses over from G to PG: Her character, constantly sneering high school grad Ronnie Miller, sports a tiny nose stud, stomps on the beach in Doc Martens, believes meat…
Another poor, massive, uneducated African-American teenager lumbers onto screens this month, two weeks after Precious and obviously timed as a pre-Thanksgiving-dinner lesson in the Golden Rule. But unlike the howling rage of Claireece Precious Jones, The Blind Side’s Michael “Big Mike” Oher (Quinton Aaron) is mute, docile, and ever-grateful to…
Anne Fontaine’s Coco Before Chanel gives us Belle Époque Coco, opening in 1893 with a grim scene of the 10-year-old waif and her sister unceremoniously dumped at an orphanage, and ending around World War I, a few years before the Chanel empire is launched. Jan Kounen’s moldy Coco Chanel &…
When, in the early ’00s, I worked as a freelancer for a publication two floors below Vogue — this was pre-Devil Wears Prada — each sighting of Anna Wintour, no matter from how great a distance, was terrifying enough to immobilize me for a few seconds, leading to a sweaty…
Two weeks after jowly Matthew Perry transformed into pretty Zac Efron to relive his adolescence in 17 Again, Warner Bros. releases Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, another backward and backward-looking child-is-father-to-the-man rom-com, with Matthew McConaughey, who, 18 years Efron’s senior and slightly butcher, has just a few more years of prettiness…
Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck have transformed some of the saggiest, most clichéd genres with smarts, non-screechy politics, superb acting, and visual beauty. Though, on paper, its premise could have easily elicited groans, Half Nelson — their 2006 feature debut (that Fleck directed and the two co-wrote) about a white…
The Confessions of a Shopaholic we need right now would be a handheld doc featuring former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain sobbing into the camera and begging the American public to forgive him for purchasing a $35,000 commode. With its curious release date — the film is meant to be…
