Momma’s Man (US, 2008)
When 30-something Mikey (Matt Boren) curls up in his bed in Momma’s Man, it’s like he’s returning to the womb. Since Mikey has just canceled his return flight to L.A., where his wife and infant daughter await him, it’s a safe bet that retreating into a cocoon is what his extended visit with Mom and…
Otto: Or, Up With Dead People (Germany/Canada, 2008)
If you like your zombies gay, sexually promiscuous and very, very hungry, Canadian provocateur Bruce LaBruce’s (The Raspberry Reich) latest work delivers the goods — and the entrails. While LaBruce probably fashions himself a spiritual descendent of previous bad-boy gay auteurs like Germany’s Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Rosa von Praunheim, he’s actually more of a…
Pray the Devil Back to Hell (US, 2008)
This well-intentioned, if not especially artful documentary by Gini Reticker examines the efforts of a group of Liberian women (both Christian and Muslim) to put an end to the sectarian violence which has been plaguing their country for decades. Like a real-life version of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, these iron ladies stopped at nothing — including withholding…
Summertime (Britain/US, 1955)
Katherine Hepburn stars in David Lean’s film about an American vacationing in Venice. Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque. At 5:15 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 31.
I’ve Loved You So Long
Kristin Scott Thomas brings such a flinty, coiled intensity to her role as a middle-aged woman newly released from prison after serving a 15-year sentence in I’ve Loved You So Long that she damn near burns a hole through the screen. Cautiously navigating the particulars of an outside world she left long ago, Scott Thomas’…
New in Town
This spotty “fish out of water” romantic comedy, directed by Denmark’s Jonas Elmer, is amiable and endearing, but ultimately lacks the imagination and cohesion to make it a success. The early scenes, in which Lucy Hill (Renée Zellweger), an ambitious food-company executive in Miami, agrees to relocate to frigid New Ulm, Minnesota to oversee a…
Taken
After years of work as a “preventer,” as he puts it, Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) is slowly putting his life back in order. He’s moved to Los Angeles to be close to his 17-year-old daughter Kim (Maggie Grace), of whom he’s very protective, even though she now lives with her mother (Famke Janssen). So when…
Outlander
No relation to the 1981 Sean Connery space western Outland, this lukewarm production is not the first, nor likely the last sci-fi picture to take its cues from Beowulf. Thinly backstoried space colonist Kainan (James Caviezal) crash-lands on grunge-tastic Viking-era Earth, where John Hurt’s tribe of barely Christianized Norsemen captures him. Kainan the Neo-Barbarian must…
The Uninvited
Despite the PG-13 rating, The Uninvited isn’t your typical teen-oriented fright flick. Directed with care and subtlety by the Guard Brothers, this remake of the Korean film A Tale of Two Sisters comes very close to being a top-notch psychological thriller. Anna (Emily Browning) has just returned home after spending some time in an asylum…
