Based on an assumedly semiautobiographical novel and well-directed by a member of the Coppola filmmaking dynasty — Christopher Neil, nephew of Francis — Goats centers on Ellis (Graham Phillips, TV’s The Good Wife), who leaves the remote Arizona desert home he shares with his trust-fund hippie mom (Vera Farmiga, Safe House) for a prestigious prep […]
comedy
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Drive-In
(How meta it would’ve been to see this at an actual drive-in; I’ll settle for its DVD debut from Sony Pictures’ Choice Collection, rather than the alternative, which is to never see it at all.) Like American Graffiti three years before it, the movie follows a select handful of youngsters, mostly teens, over the course […]
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For a Good Time, Call …
If you bet that means a lot of one-liners about penises and vaginas, and maybe some sight gags involving zeppelin-sized dildos, I congratulate you on your clairvoyance. But there are surprises here, too, particularly how sweet-natured this film actually is, and how winning are its two stars. Lauren (Lauren Anne Miller, 50/50), the straitlaced product […]
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Killer Joe
The second collaboration between director William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection) and Tulsa-born playwright Tracy Letts — their first being 2006’s Bug — this work serves up trailer-trash noir as savage as it is savagely funny. Not that all audiences will get the joke. Letts’ first play rolls around in the muck, and Friedkin […]
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Karate-Robo Zaborgar
As silly as it is satisfying, the Sushi Typhoon serving is both an update and a spoof of a live-action kiddie series from the 1970s, à la Ultraman, so the approach is both reverent and respectfully raunchy (think The Brady Bunch Movie). It’s about the love story between a man named Daimon (Yasuhisa Furuhara) and […]
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Mother’s Day
My younger brother picked up the box and asked to rent it; my mom refused, as a responsible parent should when presented with such an inquiry by a 9-year-old. I’m unsure what appealed to him: the disembodied head in a gift box or the recipient’s half-skull head? Whatever it was, it must’ve worked for a […]
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Searching for Sonny
They were both shot in Texas and, hell, they even share a character name in “Future Man,” but by no means am I suggesting Sonny should be held anywhere near the level of Bottle Rocket‘s giddy brilliance. Jason Dohring (TV’s Ringer) stars as Elliott Knight, who’s accomplished a big bunch of nothing a decade after […]
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Quick
Swapping a bus for a motorcycle, it’s more than a fair comparison. Young, handsome Gi-soo (Min-ki Lee) has left behind his days as a former biker gang member, but not his sweet set of wheels, which he uses to make a meager living as a courier. On a run early in the day, he inadvertently […]
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2 Days in New York
According to online language tools, the title Meet the Fockers roughly translates to Rencontrer les Fockers in French. I bring this up only because Parisian-born actress Julie Delpy (Before Sunset) essentially has made a French-flavored version of that comedy with 2 Days in New York, which she directed and co-wrote. 2 Days plays for exactly […]
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Bigfoot
Personally, the morbid-curiosity draw isn’t seeing the giant hairy beast, but watching The Brady Bunch’s Barry Williams square off against The Partridge Family’s Danny Bonaduce. Not since ’80s pop tarts Tiffany and Debbie Gibson matched wits in Mega Python vs. Gatoroid has The Asylum’s casting been this interesting. Williams plays a former rock star turned […]