Director Scott Cooper's long-awaited followup to Crazy Heart may make you wish the wait had been a little longer. He got his all-star cast, but forgot to come up with a logical screenplay (he shares writing credit with Brad Ingelsby). And apparently, he also got his camera stuck on Close …

Not the best film of its year to deal with the subject of magic and to feature both Scarlett Johansson and Hugh Jackman. That distinction would belong to Woody Allen's Scoop, which was unchallenged as well (except insofar as the air pressure in Jessica Biel's lips may have challenged Scarlett …

The Promise follows The Ottoman Lieutenant and Queen of the Desert as the third film in almost as many weeks set in the Ottoman Empire near the end of World War I. They saved the best for last. When the Turks learned that former studio head Kirk Kerkorian planned on …

John Dillinger revamped for a new century, more particularly Michael Mann-handled: high-def video, flattened perspective, eye-crossing closeups, jittery hand-held camera, frenetic cutting, amped-up sound, and the legendary Lady in Red is now (truth be told, among much romanticizing) the lady in orange skirt and white blouse. Pretty Boy Johnny Depp, …

A plague of napalm-breathing dragons plunges the planet into a new Dark Age. The computer-animated dragons are well designed, although (a common drawback of computer animation) they're a bit fast and agile for their size. Nice opening scene of the first dragon aroused from slumber in the London underground; amusing …

Werner Herzog's handcrafted studio film, light on special effects, shot on location in the suffocating jungles of Thailand, immersed in palpable physicality, a true-life POW survival tale that formed the basis of the filmmaker's ten-years-earlier documentary, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, about a Navy pilot downed in Laos on the …

Strictly speaking a sequel and not a remake, a perpetuation of the family name, or brand name, of the identically titled 1971 blaxploitation hit. The original John Shaft, now "Uncle" John Shaft (Richard Roundtree), puts in a couple of cameo appearances (along with his director, the leonine Gordon Parks) as …

Anxious to keep their flagging brand afloat, a pair of broken-down legends embark on a demanding tour through ramshackle England that turns out to be their last hurrah. If Hollywood makeup wizards can transform Christian Bale into Dick Cheney, an L&H makeover for Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly should …

Just when (or long after) you thought there could be nothing new to tell about life under Hitler, along comes Thomas Carter's directorial debut to unearth a subterranean society of youthful rebels in pre-war Hamburg who listened to jazz (officially known as "nigger-kike music"), danced the jitterbug, spoke a secret …

Alias T4. If, as an exercise in nostalgia, you can recollect the delectable feeling at the end of T1 (as it was not yet known) — a storm on the horizon, a bun in the oven — you would be hard put to look upon its three successors as anything …

Todd Haynes's self-indulgent and overreaching excavation of the "glam" scene of the early Seventies. It starts out in mid-19th Century with the arrival on earth of Oscar Wilde, deposited on a Dublin doorstep by flying saucer. After a forward leap of a hundred years, it settles down (somewhat) to a …

Where does skit-assembler Adam McKay (SNL, Anchorman) get off receiving name-above-the-title status? The Big Short wasn’t enough to warrant such an elevation, never mind the Oscar noms (and McKay’s win for adapted screenplay), and this throw-everything-against-the-screen-and-see-what-sticks attempt to mimic Oliver Stone is a giant, self-conscious plunge in the wrong direction. …