A likably low-rent, low-ambition entry into a genre whose standard-bearer, Meatballs, doesn't set the bar very high, Mike Stasko's Boys Vs. Girls goes to summer camp for its promised battle of the sexes.
03.12.2020 - 16:32 / hollywoodreporter.com
Early on while watching Elyse, you may find yourself wondering why on earth Anthony Hopkins agreed to appear in such a wan, amateurish drama. The answer becomes apparent when one examines the credits — the film marks the directorial debut of Stella Hopkins, and if you think the last name is a coincidence, it's not.
The director/co-screenwriter is the actor's spouse, to whom he here demonstrates an admirable level of spousal support, if not much good judgment. Hopkins (Anthony, that is) assumes
.A likably low-rent, low-ambition entry into a genre whose standard-bearer, Meatballs, doesn't set the bar very high, Mike Stasko's Boys Vs. Girls goes to summer camp for its promised battle of the sexes.
If 2020 was not exactly a banner year for art-house cinema, with festivals either cancelled or relegated to online status and theatrical releases postponed or demoted to streaming sites, this was not necessarily the case for French filmmaker Sébastien Lifshitz, who managed to put out two of his best works by December: the feature documentaries Little Girl and Adolescents, both of which saw distribution and critical acclaim at home.
A lyrical portrait of a former political giant in his twilight years, Vitaly Mansky's Gorbachev. Heaven is an unusually intimate docu-memoir that feels like an epitaph.
In theory, The Stand In might sound promising. It stars Drew Barrymore, was written by Four Lions and Peep Showscribe Sam Bain and directed by Jamie Babbit (cult queer classic But I'm a Cheerleader, plus some excellent TV episodes for Silicon Valley and Russian Doll).
There should be a limit to the number of plot twists a film can spring on an audience. Sure, it's okay for fiendishly clever puzzlers like Sleuth and Deathtrap to keep us guessing from one moment to the next.
If this were a normal festive season when it was possible to have a post-prandial snuggle on the couch with older relatives, or just fans of the best in old-school movie-star glamour, then this documentary about Audrey Hepburn — out Dec. 15 on DVD and Blu-Ray ahead of a Jan.
Far from the movie viewers may expect when they hear the words "German serial killer," Effigy: Poison and the City takes a dignified, old-fashioned approach to homicidal insanity that befits its early-19th century setting.
A vivid look at what it means for populations to rise up against governments intent on curbing their liberties, Ai Weiwei's Cockroach takes us to the streets of Hong Kong in 2019, as young people violently resist measures chipping away at their independence from mainland China. The third doc Ai has released this year (following Coronation and the Sundance entry Vivos), it's among his most effective films to date —tightly focused and morally urgent.
New York City-based filmmaker Judith Helfand broke through as a filmmaker in 1997 with a highly personal documentary, A Healthy Baby Girl. This multilayered essay on maternity, medical negligence and guilt, among many other things, explored how her mother Florence's use of a drug to prevent miscarriage led to Judith having first cervical cancer and then a radical hysterectomy in her twenties.
For non-Nordic viewers who only know of Tove Jansson as a name attached to the cuddly, dumpling-shaped creatures called the Moomins— mid-20th-century comic strip trolls resembling hippopotami, composed of negative space and living in some kind of tundra-adjacent landscape— the engaging biopic Tove will offer some interesting surprises.
More an expensive VFX demo reel than a story, the latest Paul W.S. Anderson film hopes to take yet another video game, Capcom'sMonster Hunter, and turn it into a money-minting movie franchise.
Since my parents inexplicably failed to instill in me a love for killing at an early age, I've never gone hunting. But I can imagine that it takes a lot of patience and exactitude before achieving the satisfaction of the final result.
Watch Video: Gerard Butler Outruns a Comet Destroying the Earth in First 'Greenland' TrailerAs their friends begin to panic, John and Allison get notifications on their phones and TV screens that they and Nathan have been selected by the Department of Homeland Security to be taken to an undisclosed secure site, and that they must report to an Air Force base for relocation.
Patty Jenkins' stirring 2017 stand-alone feature debut for the popular character who made her first DC Comics appearance in 1941, Wonder Woman, came along at just the right time to shake up the male-dominated superhero screen universe, reinvigorating the genre landscape with amped-up estrogen in her fight for peace, love and equality.
Watch Video: 'Wonder Woman 1984': Cheetah Goes on the Attack in New TrailerOne of the recovered items makes its way to the Smithsonian, where Wonder Woman’s alter ego Diana Prince is employed. Diana befriends nerdy gemologist Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig), who discovers that, according to legend, the gemstone has the power to grant wishes.
Watch Video: 'News of the World' Trailer: Tom Hanks Reunites With Paul Greengrass in New WesternBut “News of the World” borrows less from Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” (in which a newspaperman famously advises, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend”) than from “The Searchers,” about a Civil War veteran who finds redemption by rescuing the daughter of settlers from her indigenous kidnappers.
Sharing DNA with everything from The Terminator and contemporary superhero films to The Fisher King and Liquid Television, Adam Egypt Mortimer's Archenemy is named for a villain who may exist only in the mind of a homeless schizophrenic.
Also Read: 'Let Them All Talk' Film Review: Meryl Streep Contemplates Life, Love and Literature on Transatlantic VoyageImmaculately crafted to the most minuscule production design detail, “Minari” mines significance from the plot’s built-in wisdom, such as the water and the lack thereof standing as a metaphor for the necessary components for growth, for both the crops and the people tending to them.
The country is currently in the grip of a deadly pandemic. The death rate is higher than ever, with fatalities racing toward the 300,000 mark.