When people are apart for nearly a decade, coming together again can be awkward. But for the actors who gave America ecstatic giggles and groans in 1999’s ‘American Pie,’ it’s clear they’ve become an American Family.
The only question looming over Titanic 3D, really, is: Does the 3D get in the way? The ever-canny James Cameron has wisely resisted the temptation to tweak the film’s Oscar-winning special effects — one of the 11 Academy Awards the movie won in 1998 — or update the CGI shots of the doomed ship (which, by contemporary standards, occasionally look a little hokey) or add previously deleted footage to slap on a “Director’s Cut” subtitle that would guarantee to sell a few extra tickets.
Smack in the middle of an unremarkable city block in Wynwood, O Cinema — with its neon-blue exterior and mural of cute monsters and precocious aliens — looks out of place, like a pop art gallery that got lost on its way to Art Basel, or a quirky day-care center for parents of extra-terrestrials.
The ‘10 years of rakontur’ retrospective revisits the Miami-based studio’s films about crime and corruption.
Jiro Dreams of Sushi is as elegant and tasty as the splendid sushi prepared by the man in the title, and that is saying a lot.
Early on in Susan Seidelman’s sweet, affable Musical Chairs, the salsa-loving Armando (E.J. Bonilla) struts down a Bronx sidewalk to the rhythms of Lucha por la patria by Coati Mundi. The scene is a subtle call-out to an older, now-famous film about another young man who lived in a New York City suburb and used music and dance to escape the drab reality of his working-class life.
Was it wrong to expect something from a Hunger Games movie other than pajama-party fodder? Suzanne Collins’ dystopian sci-fi novel — the first in a trilogy — was rife with potential for a bold, daring entertainment that blended dark satire and social commentary with big action beats and thrills. Instead, what director Gary Ross opted for is an earnest, plodding thumb-sucker — a sugar-coated pacifier to appease the screaming hordes. This is a science-fiction movie of the blandest, most generic order, technically adequate but devoid of any wit or insight or anything more substantial and lasting than the cool image of Jennifer Lawrence wielding a wicked bow and arrow.
In their debut film The Puffy Chair, filmmaking brothers Jay and Mark Duplass told the story of a man driving cross-country to deliver a giant LazyBoy. In Baghead, they centered on a group of actors holed up in a cabin in the woods to brainstorm on a premise for a horror picture.
Will Ferrell has starred in some exceedingly odd comedies ( Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Land of the Lost, Semi-Pro), but he’s never made one as flat-out bizarre as Casa de mi Padre. The fact that the entire film is in Spanish, and Ferrell plays a Mexican named Armando, are two of the tamest elements in the movie.
Jeff, Who Lives at Home is a surprisingly sappy misfire from brothers Jay and Mark Duplass, a hug-it-out, touchy-feely movie that succumbs to the maudlin sentimentality they had avoided in all their previous pictures ( The Puffy Chair, Baghead, Cyrus). The movie starts out promisingly, as the titular 30-year-old pothead (Jason Segel) launches into a post-bong rant about the M. Night Shyamalan movie Signs and how the film holds the key to understanding the universe.
Bouncing between Cuba’s Tropicana nightclub and New York’s landmark jazz joints in the 1940s and ’50s, the animated musical Chico & Rita is an intoxicating, world-class collaboration between a filmmaker (Spain’s Fernando Trueba), two artists (designer Javier Mariscal and animator Tono Errando) and a musician (Cuban pianist/bandleader Bebo Valdés). The film melds dazzling visuals and a wildly infectious score into a simple yet affecting love story, written by Trueba and Ignacio Martínez de Pisón, that plays as homage to the dreamy Hollywood romances of the era.
As a teenager, Jenko (Channing Tatum) was a popular jock prone to slamming kids into lockers and doling out titty-twisters. Schmidt (Jonah Hill) was a hapless nerd with a bleached-blond Eminem bowl cut and braces large enough for Iron Man to envy. Seven years later, the two men are now police officers, relegated to bike patrol in public parks, until they bust a group of shady dopers and are promoted to the Jump Street unit, assigned to go undercover as high schoolers and bust a drug ring.
Seeking Justice, this week’s movie starring Nicolas Cage, starts intriguingly, turning the Death Wish-formula inside out. Will (Nicolas Cage), a high school English teacher, is distraught after his wife Laura ( Mad Men’s January Jones) is beated and raped and left clinging to life. In the hospital waiting room, a sharp-dressed man named Simon (Guy Pearce) approaches Will with an offer he can’t refuse.
In Juan of the Dead, a zombie epidemic breaks out in Havana, but it takes a while for the locals to notice. At first, the living dead —stumbling about in raggedy clothes, looking dazed and hungry and unwell — blend right in with the rest of the citizens of post-revolution Cuba. “Looks the same as ever to me!” says a woman about the scene outside her window.
At the start of Madrid, 1987, the cynical Miguel (José Sacristán), a veteran newspaper columnist in his 70s, goes to a café to meet Angela (María Valdaverde), a young journalism student profiling him for a school assignment.
The Argentine comedy Chinese Take-Away (Un cuento chino) opens with a marvelous, surreal gag: In a picturesque corner of China, a young man named Jun (Ignacio Huang) proposes to his girlfriend with a wedding ring — just before a cow falls from the sky and kills her on the spot.
His mother, Marjorie (Marcia Gay Harden), walked out on her honeymoon and came home, bringing her third marriage to an abrupt end. His father, Paul (Peter Gallagher), is considering plastic surgery, and asks him if he’s gay because he orders a salad for lunch. His sister, Gillian ( True Blood’s Deborah Ann Woll), is dating a married man and preparing to write her memoirs, even though she’s only 23.
Co-directors Chris Miller and Miami native Phil Lord reinvent the cult TV show for a new generation.
“The silence will kill you!” warn the posters for Silent House. That’s only if the boredom doesn’t get you first, though. The hook of this would-be horror picture (a remake of the 2010 Uruguayan chiller La casa muda) is that it unfolds in real time, all in one single, uninterrupted shot. The intent is to make you share every second of the increasing terror Sarah (Elizabeth Olsen) suffers when she goes to help her father (Adam Trese) and uncle (Eric Sheffer) clean up the family home and strange things start to happen.
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