Matt Damon and Emily Blunt are Beautiful People in Love who just want to be together, darn it. But The Chairman (i.e., God) has other plans — or rather, The Plan. So the Chairman dispatches his agents (including Terence Stamp and Mad Men’s John Slattery) to keep the lovers apart. …
The single star is because the setup is fine — almost great, even. Estranged father and son (Will and Jaden Smith) survive a crash landing on a hostile planet. Dad's injured, and so it's the son who must retrieve an emergency beacon from a distant chunk of wreckage. Technology will …
Writer-director Jill Soloway digs into the psyche of the happy homemaker's shadow self, the miserable mommy. (When all your needs are met, that's when you notice you're unhappy.) Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) is uninterested in her child, unmoved by her husband, and unconsoled by her friends. On a joyless lark, she …
Nancy Biurski's documentary on the astonishing ballerina affectionately known as Tanny is not quite a great movie: there are a few too many stills, some clunky voiceovers, and an occasionally foray into the lugubrious. But it does tell a great story. Tanny, whose long limbs and angular grace were expansive …
A dip in the frigid briney compounded by a bolt of lightning endows Blake Lively with eternal youth, and all she does with her super power is dress well and fall for some rich schmo with whom she shares no chemistry (Michiel Huisman). So little happens in the way of …
Writer-director Kim Jee-woon brings John Le Carré-style espionage to the world of Korea's struggle for independence from Japan in the '30s. Meaning: the deepest convictions of the human heart are your only hope for surviving a world where deceit and betrayal are not only common but expected, but it's a …
A date movie for those who like their passion slow-burning and risky and their storytelling laconic and moody. Bob (Casey Affleck, whose voice and manner seem to hail from the Great Depression) is an outlaw who winds up in jail for a crime he didn't commit (plus maybe some he …
Hollywood's ongoing war against great children's books scores a late victory in Miguel Arteta's version of Judith Viorst's slim '70s classic. The technique for expanding a picture book to feature length film (granted, it's only 81 minutes) isn't great: after having the day in question, Alexander (Ed Oxenbould) wishes that …
Take away the stupidly expensive (and sometimes just stupid, or overdone, or overlong) visual effects, take away the sad necessity of hitching your story to a familiar wagon (oh, look, the first installment in this particular reboot of an established property made over a billion dollars!), take away the Disneyfied …
Ridley Scott finishes what he started in Prometheus: the story of David (Michael Fassbender), a sentient creation who discovers that his creator is laughably inferior, but still potentially useful. (There’s a bang-up opening scene featuring David’s awakening — physical and otherwise — for those who may have thought they were …
In 2006, tech-friendly social worker Dan Cohen got the bright idea to bring iPods loaded with personalized playlists to elderly nursing home patients suffering from disconnection. Whether because of Alzheimer's, dementia, or schizophrenia, these people had lost touch with the world, and with themselves. In at least a few instances, …