The Dictator: Sacha Baron Cohen Misses the Comedy Revolution

In his third collaboration with director Larry Charles, Sacha Baron Cohen plays Admiral General Aladeen, the young, dumb dictator of fictional North African nation Wadiya. Under Aladeen’s rule, oil-producing, uranium-enriching Wadiya is a hostile threat to global peace and capitalism. And yet, Aladeen himself is so attracted to Western culture…

Battleship: Because Every Generation Needs an Armageddon

Every once in a while, a movie comes along that’s so utterly shameless that it achieves a certain grandeur. Peter Berg’s Battleship, which, I swear to God, is described in its Wikipedia entry as an “American science fiction action naval war film,” is one such movie. Over the past few…

Sound of My Voice: Brit Marling Preaches End Times

Twentysomething Silver Lake couple Peter (Christopher Denham) and Lorna (Nicole Vicius) talk their way into an unnamed cult that meets in the basement of a San Fernando Valley split-level in the middle of the night to follow the teachings of the enigmatic Maggie (Brit Marling). A supposedly sickly yet ethereally…

Bernie: Richard Linklater Goes Deep in the Heart of Texas

Richard Linklater’s Bernie is the rarest of rarities: a truly unexpected film. It might be classified as a black comedy, for it deals with the murder of an 81-year-old woman in a fashion that is not exactly tragic. But unlike most movies that fall under that label, it never indulges…

The Three Worst Mistakes Made in Time Travel Movies

After alien invasions and Samuel L. Jackson appearances, time travel is the next best plot device Hollywood can inject into a film to maximize audience attendance.The latest example: Men In Black 3 (released next week — in 3D!), in which Will Smith goes back to the 1960’s to meet a…

Bobcat Goldthwait Is Making Comedies in His Own Register

Bobcat Goldthwait is moving farther and farther away from Hollywood — the industry that paid him to star in three Police Academy movies and the geographical area of Los Angeles. Last week, he presented his new directorial effort, God Bless America, at a radio-station promo gig in Omaha and, a…

Dark Shadows: Johnny Depp As Vampire Family Man

Much of Tim Burton’s output over the past decade has been concerned with slipping the “Burton treatment” to susceptible texts: Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland — and now, Dark Shadows. A supernaturally themed daily daytime soap, Dark Shadows…

God Bless America: Bobcat Goldthwait’s Pseudo-Enlightened Death Penalty

Frank (Joel Murray) is an outcast. We first meet this divorced, 50-ish, glumly alcoholic white-collar worker — the protagonist of Bobcat Goldthwait’s God Bless America — on one of his sleepless nights, entertaining homicidal fantasies about the couple next door. “They’re incapable of comprehending that their actions affect other people,”…

Five Must-See Movies in May

Sometimes a movie screens for one night only, and sometimes it shows for weeks or months. That’s why when it comes to moviegoing, planning ahead is crucial. Planners that we are, we’ve selected five must-see flicks screening in the Valley this month. Stock up on your preferred salty, sweet snacks…

The Avengers: Superheroes Bump Superegos

At the start of Joss Whedon’s long-awaited Marvel superhero supergroup flick, The Avengers, the Tesseract — a powerful, potentially dangerous glowing cube that fell to the ocean floor after Captain America (Chris Evans) liberated it from the Nazis in his movie last summer — is in the hands of NASA…

Tonight: AIGA Brings Handmade Nation to FilmBar

Welcome to the Morning Buzz, a catch-up on interesting happenings around the city and country and a quick guide to what (and who) to keep your eyes on. We’ll be here, first thing every weekday, to get you going. Here’s what’s buzzing this morning: When the local chapter of design…

The Deep Blue Sea: Lovers Try to Stay Above Water

The Deep Blue Sea, the first fiction feature in a dozen years from visionary British director Terence Davies, is a film about love that in no way reassures that love conquers all. Plumbing disquieting depth, Deep Blue Sea investigates the insoluble dilemma of romantic love: the expectation, contrary to experience,…

Nine Favorite 30 Rock Moments (VIDEO)

Without working ourselves into too much of a premature lather let’s note: 30 Rock is a few episodes away from its season six finale, which airs May 17, and NBC has yet to renew the Thursday night standby for another season. And it sure seems possible that the premise of…

Whit Stillman Returns Triumphant with Damsels in Distress

Whit Stillman made a name for himself making semiautobiographical, deadpan, highly literate comedies about the night lives of idle heirs (his 1990 Oscar-nominated debut Metropolitan), privileged Americans abroad (Barcelona, 1994), and resilient yuppies in decadent early ’80s Manhattan (The Last Days of Disco, 1998). But for more than a decade,…