We’ve seen other films about fans setting out to meet a famous idol—a reclusive singer or movie star or writer. But few of these movies have the charm of Coming Through the Rye, the tale of a boy determined to track down his hero, J.D. Salinger. The film has been shown at a few smaller festivals around the country, frequently winning awards along the way, but it is still seeking a distributor. Although it won’t …
A lushly appointed period piece about the women’s suffrage movement in England in the early 20th century sounds like Masterpiece Theatre fodder, polite and tasteful and a bit pallid. The surprise of Suffragette is how much anger and urgency it contains, and how much new material it unearths. Many people may have forgotten that the fight for women’s rights once involved the same danger as other battles for equality like the American civil rights movement …
Writer-director Nancy Meyers has scored a number of commercial successes (including It’s Complicated and Something’s Gotta Give) by going against the grain and making movies centered on women and aimed at older audiences. These films have not always fared as well with critics as with audiences, and you can expect the same divided response to her latest feel-good comedy, The Intern. Box office should be healthy, even though the movie offers more frustrations than rewards …
Probably everyone has had the discomfiting experience of siting stone-faced at a comedy while others in the theater are whooping with laughter. And so it was at the screening of Vacation, the gross followup to the Chevy Chase comedy from 1983, National Lampoon’s Vacation, a smash hit that launched a franchise. Judging from the laughter in the theater, this new movie should be popular, though it remains to be seen whether the hard-R rating will …
In 1966 John Frankenheimer directed one of his most audacious movies, Seconds, with a script by Lewis John Carlino from a novel by David Ely. It told the story of an older banker who solicits the help of a shadowy organization that will fake his death and reconstruct him with a brand new identity as well as a new face and body. The movie was a box office flop but has developed a cult following …
