“And the Oscar Goes To . . . ” screens Wednesday at Eastgate and Sundance Cinemas. Not rated, 1:35, two and a half stars out of four.
You know those movie montages that seem to be included in every Academy Award ceremony, those scattershot “We love movies!” clip collections that never seem to have any theme or coherence to them? (The “hero” montage from last month’s Oscars, which shoehorned everyone from Iron Man to Atticus Finch, comes to mind.)
“Cheap Thrills” has a free screening in Madison at 7 p.m. Sunday, April 13 at the Union South Marquee Theatre, 1308 W. Dayton St. Director E.L. Katz and actor Pat Healy will be in attendance. R, 1:25, three and a half stars out of four. This review is based on a report I wrote from the 2013 Wisconsin Film Festival.
“Cheap Thrills” is, first and foremost, a hell of a lot of fun, a raucous pressure cooker that dishes out laughs and shrieks with equal measure. I am a bit of a wuss when it comes to movies like this, but I walked out of a screening feeling like I had just put my tongue on a 9-volt battery. In a good way.
“The Lunchbox” is now playing at Sundance Cinemas. PG, 1:45, three and a half stars out of four.
First of all, I want one of those lunchboxes. Instead of the suitcase-style boxes that Americans are used to, the Indian characters in “The Lunchbox” use an ingenious contraption made up of stacking cylinders, so you can put your vegetables in one cylinder, the rice in a second and the sauce in a third.
“Rob the Mob” is now playing at Sundance Cinemas. R, 1;44, three stars out of four.
From the outside, “Rob the Mob” looks like it’ll be a gritty slice of gangster life. But when you see it’s directed by Raymond De Fellitta, who made some ingratiating Italian-American comedy-dramas in “City Island” and “Two Family House,” you suspect that beneath the gunplay and fuhgettaboutits beats a sentimental heart. The f-bombs are hurled, but lovingly.
Enemy” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. R, 1:30, three stars out of four.
It happened to me. It was 1995, and I was backpacking through Europe. At the Czech Consulate in London, while waiting to get a travel visa to go to Prague, I looked across the crowded waiting room. Slouched against the far wall was a man who looked exactly like me.
“The Face of Love” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. PG-13, 1;32, two stars out of four.
It would seem that all you would have to do is point a camera at Annette Bening and Ed Harris and you’d have yourself a movie. Both actors seem incapable of seeming inauthentic on screen — Harris has been a charimsatic character actor for 30 years now, while Bening creates satisfyingly complex women nearly every time she’s on screen. Just put them at a dinner table, give them something to say, and they’re off.
“Muppets Most Wanted” opens Friday at Point, Eastgate and Star Cinemas. PG, 1:52, three stars out of four.
Any movie that starts off with a musical number that parodies both Busby Berkeley and “The Seventh Seal” is getting off on the right foot. And, from that high-energy opening song, which ironically is about how sequels never live up to the original, “Muppets Most Wanted” is a lot of fun for both kids and their parents.
“Stranger By the Lake” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. Not rated, (contains explicit sexual content), 1:37, three and a half stars out of four.
“I’m not sure it’s allowed here.” “It’s not allowed anywhere.”
The sliver of beach in rural France is an idyll for gay men, both closeted and open. They come, remove their clothes, stretch out in the sand, or go for a swim. Little is said on the beach. But, eventually, most of them go up into the woods for a stroll, and find each other there.
“Tim’s Vermeer” opens Friday at Sundance. PG-13, 1:20, three and a half stars out of four.
About a decade ago, I was lucky enough to do phone interviews with both Penn Jillette and his partner Teller ahead of an appearance at the old Madison Civic Center. I asked Jillette, after years of doing the same illusions over and over again before audiences, what kept him interested?
“Better Living Through Chemistry” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. R, 1:31, two stars out of four.
“Better Living Through Chemistry” opens with a clever credits sequence, as the camera glides over a HO-scale model town with every tree, every citizen lovingly reproduced in miniature — right down to the tiny plastic couple having sex by an open window.
Unfortunately, it quickly becomes clear that the characters in the movie aren’t much more realistic than the plastic figurines.
Madison Movie 