Film
Hitchcock: In Which the Director Is Treated as a Sad Clown
Early in this movie, Alfred Hitchcock (played by Sir Anthony Hopkins with a sack of fat connecting chin…
Film
Addicted to Fame: The Unseemly End of Anna Nicole Smith
David Giancola’s cheapo, disingenuous doc contributes one painful scene to the collective understanding of what it must feel…
Film
Killing Them Softly: Brad Pitt Shoots and Lectures
An adaptation of George V. Higgins’ 1974 novel Cogan’s Trade, Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly anatomizes a self-policing…
Film
Radio Unnameable: Remember When Talk Radio Was Actually Intelligent?
A sporadically hard-selling homage to a cult hero from an overchronicled era, Radio Unnameable considers the career of…
Film
The Big Picture: A Lawyer’s Unlawful Identity Theft
“You’re as free as the wind,” says Paul Exben (Romain Duris) to the son of a legal client…
Film
Barrymore: Christopher Plummer Plays the Hollywood Icon
Anyone even slightly versed in Hollywood lore knows that the scandals that make TMZ twitter are child’s play…
Film
Citadel: An Englishman’s Paternal Nightmare
Reportedly inspired by a violent mugging experienced by writer/director Ciarán Foy, this hopelessly muddled horror movie takes place…
Film
Now, Forager: Love and Mushrooms
Sulky indie drama might not have been the best path through a story of mushroomers in a troubled…
Film
Path of Khan
“I can’t think of a more pathetic situation for an actor than to do a film and not…
Film
Anna Karenina: Keira Knightley’s Mad, Theatrical Passion
Tolstoy’s family epic has been smartly contoured to fit just more than two hours of screen time by…
Film
Silver Linings Playbook: Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence Fall in Love
If you took the fighting out of The Fighter, David O. Russell’s previous movie, you’d be left with…
Film
Cafe de Flore: Love in Quebec, Pathos in Paris
If you don’t have the patience for Cloud Atlas‘ six plots in three hours, how about two in…
Film
Life of Pi: Ang Lee Versus the Overrated Novel
A stacked-deck theological inquiry filtered through a spectacular Titanic-by-way-of-Slumdog Millionaire narrative, Life of Pi manages occasional spiritual wonder…
Film
Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters: Following the Famed Photographer
A decade’s fretting and futzing, and the few ecstatic moments rendered along the way, are compressed into 77…
Film
Bel Borba Aqui: Folk Art in Brazil
The demolished buildings of Salvador, Brazil, are substrates for public art to one native son. Bel Borba, a…
Film
Jack and Diane: A Different Kind of Teen Romance
Equating teens and animals has long been a handy horror-cinema way to tackle pubescent sexual development. So with…
Film
Holy Motors: Leos Carax’s Unclassifiable Comeback
Unclassifiable, expansive, and breathtaking, Leos Carax’s Holy Motors stars Denis Lavant, the simian, sinewy actor who played the…
Film
A Royal Affair: Mads Mikkelsen in a Royal Romantic Triangle
The way to a queen’s heart is through Rousseau in A Royal Affair, in which church and state…
Film
Spielberg’s Lincoln Comeback
The first few minutes of Lincoln (review) play out like a parody of the expectations of Steven Spielberg’s detractors.…
Film
The Flat: A Fascinating Doc About the Holocaust
It begins as an ordinary, if bittersweet, family event. The 98-year-old grandmother of Israeli filmmaker Arnon Goldfinger has…