Film
Wanderlust: Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston on the Commune
“There’s no one way to live our lives,” hopes the displaced, adrift couple at the center of Wanderlust.…
Film
This Means War: Reese Witherspoon Must Choose Between Two Hunks
Hostilities in This Means War are declared as two workmates compete for the affection of the same woman.…
Film
Man on a Mission: A Travel Movie From Space
The man in the title is British-American multimillionaire Richard Garriott, who made his pile designing PC “virtual world”…
Film
The Innkeepers: Guests Check In, but They Don’t Check Out
Horror movies are lately given to gluttonous effects, but director Ti West (The House of the Devil) is…
Film
Haywire: Soderbergh’s MMA Sex Comedy
Haywire‘s plot is boilerplate triple-cross, cloak-and-dagger stuff—but the action choreography by director Steven Soderbergh and MMA fighter Gina…
Film
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: Oscar-Trolling 9/11 Kitsch
Director Stephen Daldry has never met a Big Theme he didn’t like: After 2002’s The Hours, a lugubrious…
Film
El Sicario, Room 164: A Mexican Assassin Tells All
The subject of Gianfranco Rosi’s documentary portrait is a former resident of Ciudad Juárez, a Mexican city where,…
Film
The Adventures of Tintin: Spielberg’s 3-D Detective Is a Little Creepy
Steven Spielberg’s motion-captured, 3-D The Adventures of Tintin rolls together plot elements from three comic-book adventures starring Belgian…
Film
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows: An Acceptable Robert Downey Jr. Sequel
The great success of Guy Ritchie’s 2009 Sherlock Holmes was to make Arthur Conan Doyle’s gimlet-eyed detective, first…
Film
Outrage: Takeshi Kitano Continues His Yakuza Fixation
Takeshi Kitano’s latest finds the actor/director returning to the familiar terrain of the yakuza film after recent farces…
Film
Like Crazy: Young Love in the Age of Skype
Anna (Felicity Jones) is an aspiring journalist, a wee wisp of a girl come from Britain to study…
Film
Tower Heist: This All-Star Heist Flick Actually Ain’t Bad
A revenge of the have-nots playing on the clear class stratification of the luxury high-rise, Tower Heist pits…
Film
Puncture: An Important Medical Issue, Poorly Dramatized
Puncture is proudly “Based on a True Story.” As is so often the case, this means an indifference…
Film
Anonymous: A Pointless Elizabethan Thriller
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, is the close-second candidate for authorship of the 37 plays of…
Film
Toast: An English Foodie’s Coming-of-Age
Premiered as a BBC1 telefilm, now flaunting its wasteful widescreen in theaters, Toast adapts the autobiography of Nigel…
Film
Killer Elite: Not Even Close to Sam Peckinpah
Wholly unrelated to the 1975 Sam Peckinpah film of the same name, Killer Elite is distinguished by one…
Film
Nora’s Will: Jewish Mourning in Mexico City
José (Fernando Luján) has been divorced from Nora for 20 years. They were married at least as long.…
Film
Warrior: There’s Not Enough Nick Nolte in This Wrestling Melodrama
You know those Affliction shirts, covered in skulls, gothic lettering, and tribal patterns, all cacophonous symbols of badass…
Film
The Guard: Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle as Mismatched Cops
This shaggy-man character study follows a 50-something policeman in western Ireland, Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson). No by-the-book…
Film
Road to Nowhere: Old Master Monte Hellman Still Has Some Life in Him
At his peak (Two-Lane Blacktop, Cockfighter), Monte Hellman superbly combined an absurdist worldview and snapshot-authentic Middle America. But…