Children switched at birth is both a parent's worst nightmare and the basis of untold movie-of-the-week melodramas. Happily, this nurturing, resoundingly contemplative family drama comes dealt with an open hand by master filmmaker Hirokazu Koreeda (After Life, Still Walking). Driven businessman Ryota Nonomiya (Masaharu Fukuyama) doesn’t have time for impromptu …
A logical follow up to director Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy. From its opening long take — the lead character speaks from outside the frame — Kiarostami's sleight of hand draws us headfirst into this Tokyo tale of purposeful miscommunication and calculated role-playing. (A painting in the film Training a Parrot …
God grant me the serenity and the wisdom of knowing the difference between movies and this, the closest we’ll ever come to experiencing someone of Meryl Streep’s caliber in a Death Wish spinoff. The always brilliant, technically perfect Viola Davis stars opposite comic relief Jennifer Lopez as a pill- and …
Junn (Ching Pei-pei) never knew her late son Kai (Andrew Leung) was gay. So the sudden appearance of the boy’s well-intentioned ex, Richard (Ben Wishaw), leaves Junn puzzled and inwardly jealous of the affection her son lavished on his “best friend.” The stoical Cambodian-Chinese widow refuses to adapt to the …
Four score and 150 minutes ago, Steven Spielberg shifted into his John Ford mode with this giant, myth-bolstering Golden Book of a movie. As the Civil War rages on, we open with a moment lifted from Saving Private Ryan: a shorter, but equally anonymous massacre. Inasmuch as it fails to …
Linda Ronstadt was the first female artist to leave an otherwise male band hot on the heels of a hit to launch a solo career. A lyric from the Stone Poneys tune that put her on the map foreshadowed the key to her success: Ronstadt was not about to have …
A predominantly female audience, apparently welded to their divans, drowse their way through a piano recital, but it’s Count Egano (Massimo Girotti), seated center-frame and the first to exit, who draws our attention. He’s followed by Teresa (Jennifer O’Neill), who interrupts her hostess to bid an early farewell, but not …
I’d be lyin’ were I to express indifference to Lion, the story of a young man who, twenty years after an unexpected trip on an decommissioned train car deposited him 1000 miles from home, uses Google Earth to reunite with his long-lost family. The task of wringing overpowering visuals out …
Marlon Brando left behind hundreds of hours of audio-taped autobiography (and some home movies) for documentary director Stevan Riley to effectively make over as the world’s first talking cyber-head documentary. What appears to be an unfledged 3D recreation of Brando’s head informs us that before his death, the actor posed …
What happens when an underprivileged teen becomes surrogate son to the mother whose boy he haphazardly kills? First time writer-director Sara Colangelo explores the aftermath of several little accidents as seen through the eyes of three generations of mining families wracked by a tragic explosion and soon braided together by …
The vested proprietor of a dress shop (a slow-burning Paulina Garcia) whose decision it is to steadfastly use family secrets as a cudgel against the son (Greg Kinnear) of her recently deceased landlord and confidant — she insists it was his father’s desire that she stay there — makes it …
Emergency medical technician Susette Kelo (Catherine Keener) epitomizes the kind of calming curbside manner that a patient in need of emergency care would die for. True story: Kelo, a paramedic from New London, Connecticut, grudgingly took on corporate America, journeying all the way to the Supreme Court in order to …
Joe ‘Deke’ Deacon (Denzel Washington), a Bakersfield cop with a spiritual side (hence the nickname) and a tainted past as an L.A. Detective, is assigned a return trip to his roots to pick up a pair of blood-stained boots. But rather than retrieving the evidentiary material, all Deke seems able …
New rule of cinema: when a character pilots a vehicle down a deserted, dead-silent street for what seems like an inordinate amount of time, chances are a truck is about to come along and simultaneously shatter the complacency and a few bones. Such is the fate of Oscar-winner Jean Dujardin, …
For her no-nonsense maiden feature, writer-director Nia DaCosta tries her luck at the tested and proven “one last score before calling it quits” crime drama. The result is Frozen River minus the tension. Ollie (Tessa Thompson) has paid her debt to society for running prescription drugs across the Canadian border, …