Movie Reviews
For 28 years, two loyal friends serve a concurrent prison sentence: Val (Al Pacino), behind bars for refusing to finger an associate, and Doc (Christopher Walken), on the outside, waiting to perform the hit when …
Musician Ron Najor produces the film I Am Not a Hipster, screened at Sundance and now on cable and DVD.
The “West Memphis Three” (Jessie Misskelley, Damien Echols, and Jason Baldwin) were teenagers in 1993 when they were wrongfully convicted of the murders of three eight-year-old boys. Directed by investigative journalist Amy Berg (Deliver Us …
A shaggy dog story about a nearly hairless cat in 1920s Algiers. He serves his master the rabbi, but he loves his mistress, the rabbi’s fleshy daughter. When he eats the family parrot and so …
Judging by the dewy exhalation that sighed forth from at least half the audience in attendance at the prerelease screening, it may be that the opportunity to put sensitive, handsome Ryan Gosling in a suit …
Spoiler alert: it ends with the bad guy getting killed. More hurt from Kathryn Bigelow in this docudrama-style (read: handheld) account of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. You can’t preach due process without practicing …
A nonstop joke machine (Billy Crystal) and his equally overbearing wife (Bette Midler) are forced to spend time with their work-obsessed daughter (Marisa Tomei), son-in-law (Tom Everett Scott), and a trio of estranged grandchildren, all …
Quentin Tarantino fails to do for slave owners what he did for Nazis in this, his long-awaited western (southern?) follow-up to the epic war comedy Inglourious Basterds. Oscar-winner Christoph Waltz returns to the Tarantino fold …
It would be easy, and it is certainly tempting, to use a review of The Hobbit as the occasion for an all-out assault on High Frame Rate (HFR) digital cinema. HFR is, after all, the …
This is my farewell column, but not a whine about leaving the Reader. The problems of movie critics don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. And it would be bad form …
Years in development, Ridley Scott’s Aliens prequel Prometheus flaunts many roots, from epic themes sucked out of 2001: A Space Odyssey to the inevitable, awful ick-with-teeth (Aliens and its progeny). There is a dull nod …
As Queen Ravenna, the vicious usurper in Snow White and the Huntsman, Charlize Theron looks so fabulous that her Oscar-winner, Aileen Wuornos in Monster, seems almost another species. An empress of narcissism, Ravenna insists on …
Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom opens with Benjamin Britten’s “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra.” The tactic, like the music, is inspired. The kids of the Bishop family listen to the vinyl LP, and their imaginations …
Through his career, François Cluzet has been chased by a resemblance to Dustin Hoffman. In a restrained French way, he might be as talented. I would rather view again his quadriplegic Philippe in The Intouchables …
What a wasted opportunity. Somebody — presumably writers Oren Peli and Carey and Shane Van Dyke — had the fine idea of capitalizing on the current anxieties surrounding nuclear power in a post-Fukushima world (hello, …
I wish there were more films like I Wish: films that capture the wise foolishness and foolish wisdom of children without making them into miniature adults. Films that take seriously the efforts of children to …