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Casino Jack: Kevin Spacey Turns Evil!
The late George Hickenlooper’s Casino Jack is an improbably blithe cautionary tale, recounting the rise and fall of…
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Guy & Madeline on a Park Bench: A Delightful Indie Musical
A quasi-documentary portrait of young non-actors striking poses, walking around Boston, hanging out, and playing or listening to…
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The King’s Speech: Colin Firth Stammers His Way Toward an Oscar
A picnic for Anglophiles, not to mention a prospective Oscar bonanza for the brothers Weinstein, The King’s Speech…
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True Grit: The Coen Brothers Improve on the 1969 Western
Boldly reanimating the comic Western that secured John Wayne his Oscar 41 years ago, the Coen brothers’ True…
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Tron: Legacy: Old Jeff Bridges Battles Young Jeff Bridges in Disneys Reboot
Jeff Bridges is God and, as image-captured from the original 1982 Tron, he’s also the devil in Disney’s…
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The Fighter: Mark Wahlberg Tries to Out-Rocky Rocky
The Fighter is based on the true story of Lowell, Mass., light welterweight champ “Irish” Micky Ward, but,…
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Black Swan: Natalie Portman Is Crazy for Swan Lake
A near-irresistible exercise in bravura absurdity, Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan deserves to become a minor classic of heterosexual…
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White Material: Isabelle Huppert Gets Kicked Out of Africa
Claire Denis’ tense, convulsive White Material is a portrait of change and a thing of terrible beauty. The…
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The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector: From Top 40 to a Life Sentence
A feature-length portrait of a pop-music genius as (pre-)convicted murderer, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector…
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The Nutcracker in 3-D: John Turturro as the Rat King?
Announced at Cannes in 2007 and scheduled to shoot that summer, Andrei Konchalovsky’s version of The Nutcracker arrives…
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Boxing Gym: Frederick Wiseman’s Last Hurrah?
Boxing Gym is 80-year-old documentarian Frederick Wiseman’s 38th feature. Despite, or perhaps because of, its relatively modest length…
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Tamara Drewe: Stephen Frears Makes Hay at a Writers Colony
Comely, independent, willful young lass returns to collect family inheritance in rural England, drives the local men wild,…
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Howl: James Franco Has a Man-Crush on Allen Ginsberg
As suggested by its title, Allen Ginsberg’s game-changing poem Howl is essentially performative—and so is Howl, the Sundance-opening…
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Inside Job: Welcome to CDO Hell
Charles Ferguson’s follow-up to his Iraq War gut-twister No End in Sight is a documentary that inspires sickening…
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Hereafter: Clint Eastwood Sees Ghosts
Is America’s last cowboy icon prospecting for more Oscar gold? Taking for his map an original screenplay by…
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The Anchorage: Immersion in a Swedish Forest
C.W. Winter and Anders Edström’s The Anchorage uses a narrative structure introduced to more powerful effect 35 years…
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Never Let Me Go: Would You Like to Buy Keira Knightley’s Liver?
Published five years ago, Kazuo Ishiguro’s massively praised Never Let Me Go is set in an alternate universe…
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The Social Network: It’s Lonely at the Top of Facebook
As directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin, Facebook mogul Mark Zuckerberg is a character far…
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Lebanon: A Claustrophobic Drama of Israel’s Failed War
Written and directed by Samuel Maoz, Lebanon is not just the year’s most impressive first feature but also…
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Life During Wartime: Todd Solondz, Again With the Pedophilia?
Daring discomfited viewers to laugh at shame and suffering, and then wonder why we’re laughing, Todd Solondz is…