A nominal sequel to Mel Gibson’s 1995 epic “Braveheart” sounds thrilling all around — bringing viewers back to Scotland’s bloody medieval war cry against the brute, Edward Longshanks of England. Enter Robert the Bruce. In it, Angus Macfadyen (“The Lost City of Z”) also reprises his role as Scottish freedom fighter, Robert the Bruce. Yes,…
If Joel and Ethan Coen’s “The Big Lebowski” is a stoner neo-noir comedy based on a misidentification, then John Turturro’s sort of spin-off The Jesus Rolls is a road movie based on a lack of destination. Not that any comparison between the two films is fair because they are very different. “The Big Lebowski” takes…
Nicolas Cage (“211”) generally uses a couple of different gears of crazed for his movies nowadays, one a sort of wild-eyed screaming banshee and the other not so much. In Grand Isle, he dials it back ever so slightly to give us the kind of unhinged lunatic that most audiences (me included) find entertaining. To…
As far as random indie comedies starring a mix of rising and veteran stars go, the darkly silly Corporate Animals is a surprisingly digestible serving of oddball nonsense. For starters, it concerns itself with a team-building retreat that goes awry when employees of a company that makes edible utensils are suddenly forced to consider each…
An astronomer, obsessed with finding a planet capable of supporting life, hires a dreamy, itinerant artist with no background in science to be his research assistant in the majestic, gorgeous Clara. This is a movie that should appeal to romantics and science wonks alike, and it features strong performances by the two leads, who happen…
Cold Blood, by writer-director Frédéric Petitjean, is the assemblage of a lot of good ideas that belong in different movies into one 90-minute feature that couldn’t possibly hope to explore them all properly. What we’re left with is the semblance of movie, the component parts of which are so at odds with each other that…
This blood-is-thicker-than-water melodrama, A Violent Separation, presents itself as a study in the ties that bind, a familial tale that is unfortunately all too familiar. In it, a cop brother named Norman (Brenton Thwaites, “Gods of Egypt”) helps his shadier brother named Ray (Ben Robson, “The Boy”) out of a particularly horrible jam, with each…
