Having trouble getting past the title Lucky Number Slevin (Weinstein)? In spite of a few superficial pleasures, the movie doesn't go down much easier; the knotty plotting and smug attitudinizing that have plagued indie crime capers since Reservoir Dogs choke it. Slevin recalls the days when movies like Truth Or Consequences, N.M. were coming out every two weeks, and those days should stay long gone…
It's only been five months since The Wild (Walt Disney) hit theaters, but hey, that's still five extra months' worth of distance from last year's Madagascar, which told a far too similar story about New York zoo animals escaping to the jungle. Still, even when considered on its own, The Wild is too slight, too busy, and far too packed with annoying, purposeless subsidiary characters to be fun for anyone but the most sugared-up kids. Way too much shrill comic relief, not nearly enough core plot to need relieving…
How big is soccer around the world? So big that Goal! The Dream Begins (Buena Vista), a modest little underdog story about an illegal immigrant who works his way up to a European club team, has two planned sequels in the pipeline. The chances of those movies reaching American theaters is pretty slight, but the dozens of fans here can enjoy a hilariously stiff cameo by David Beckham, as well as Zinédine Zidane's lethal forehead…
A neurotic with avant-garde tendencies, Caveh Zahedi suggests Woody Allen crossbred with Jean-Luc Godard in the mercilessly self-deprecating autobiographical comedy I Am A Sex Addict (IFC). Playing himself, he catalogs his failed long-term relationships, which are owed in large part to his helpless prostitute fetish. At the same time, the idea of an open relationship fills him with jealousy. His rank hypocrisy gets twisted into a frank, hilarious reflection on narcissism, misogyny, and hard-won love…
A morbid two-and-a-half-hour black comedy about one man's deteriorating journey through the Romanian health-care system sounds like the toughest sell in distribution history, but it's a credit to Cristi Puiu's The Death Of Mr. Lazarescu (Tartan) that someone found it worth a shot. As the poor sap of the title gets dragged from one apathetic emergency room to another, the film evolves into the anti-E.R., and its grim humor stings.