With the “Austin Powers” movies, the joke was funny the first time around ... the second time, not so much. (And the third? Yikes.) That pattern also applies to “OSS 117: Lost in Rio,” the follow-up to “OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies” from 2006.
Parodying Agent 007 and cheesy 1960s flicks, Mike Myers’ groovy cryogenic spy beat this satirical French series to the punch onscreen. But on the page, Gallic pulp scribe Jean Bruce produced his first book in 1949, several years before Ian Fleming published the first James Bond title. Bruce’s secret agent, saddled with the name Hubert Bonisseur de La ...
With hit satiric flicks (“Shaun of the Dead,” “Zombieland”) and a big-selling mashup book (“Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”), the undead are enjoying a zesty pop-culture resurrection. There is also a revival, of sorts, right here in Atlanta. But the latest film from writer-director George A. Romero -- whose 1968 “Night of the Living Dead” is the “Citizen Kane” of movies about brain eaters -- is D.O.A.
Following his dramatically bloodless (sorry) “Diary of the Dead” (2007), “Survival of the Dead” comes off, with its grade-Z script and special effects, like one of those monster-of-the-week flicks from the Syfy Channel.
In the ...
Slight and bittersweet, “Mid-August Lunch” -- "Pranzano di Ferragosto" in the original -- is a far cry from the mafioso violence of “Gomorrah,” from 2008, a movie co-written by Gianni Di Gregorio. Here, he makes his directing debut, as well as penning the script and starring as a man named, well, Gianni. Sad-eyed and gently patient, Gianni lives in a spacious but crumbling Roman apartment with his 90-something mother (Valeria De Franciscis). Pushing 60, Gianni is no kid himself, and has never been married. (There’s an interesting vagueness to the nature of Gianni’s sexuality.)
What we see of the mother and ...
You want bleak? I’ll give you bleak. Go to Landmark Midtown Art Cinema and buy tickets to the three-part heaping helping of serial murder, police corruption and granite-gray despair known as the “Red Riding” trilogy. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Based on David Peace’s best-selling books and originally shot for British television, these overpraised movies -- "Electrifying!," "Cinematic Event of the Year!" -- are, if nothing else, an interesting experiment in visual texture. Julian “Kinky Boots” Jarrold shot the first (“Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1974”) on 16mm film. James “Man on Wire” Marsh shot the ...
It is July of 1936, a month before the Berlin Olympic Games. Leaders of the Third Reich are looking for German or Austrian athletes to find Alpine victory scaling the Eiger's sheer rock face, which no man by that point had achieved. Based on fact but highly fictionalized, "North Face" tells of Bavarian best friends Toni Kurz (Benno Fürmann) and Andi Hinterstoisser (Florian Lukas), who take their love of mountain climbing into the international spotlight when they attempt to conquer the Eiger.
They're also nonpartisan fellas at a time when no one could be apolitical, ignoring soldiers’ “Heil Hitlers!” and engaging with the mountain simply ...
Visually, “The Secret of Kells” is a knockout. Too bad the script isn’t nearly as artful. A surprise Oscar nominee for best animated feature (it lost to Pixar’s “Up”), this kiddie-aimed movie takes us to a deeply stylized Ireland, circa A.D. 800.
Young Brendan (voiced by Evan McGuire) labors as a kind of mascot to the Christian brethren, who are led by his uncle, the abbot (Brendan Gleason). They are busy building walls around their encampment at Kells to shield against Viking marauders. Fleeing these same Northerners, old brother Aidan (Mick Lally) arrives from the isle of Iona, carrying a ...
