Film
Higher Ground: Vera Farmiga’s Consideration of Wavering Faith
Vera Farmiga’s directorial debut, in which the actress plays Corinne, a woman who chafes against the restrictions of…
Film
A Good Old Fashioned Orgy: Less Sexy Than It Sounds
A group of 30-somethings trapped in the amber of their high-school years attempt to bone their way into…
Film
The Afterlight: A Poor Imitation of Terrence Malick
Much as aspiring fiction writers should be prevented from reading Raymond Carver, young filmmakers should be strongly cautioned…
Film
Bellflower: A Very Handmade Indie
Dutifully hipster-hyped at Sundance and South by Southwest, writer/director/actor Evan Glodell’s testosterone-fueled, fever-dream indie impresses less for its…
Film
The Debt: Helen Mirren Hunts Nazis
A remake of the far more brisk 2007 Israeli film with a bullpen of aging stars, this rather…
Film
Mr. Nice: The True Story of an English Drug Lord
As might be expected of a globe-hopping, decades-spanning drug-smuggler biopic, Mr. Nice commences by trying to induce a…
Film
Seven Days in Utopia: Robert Duvall Cashes an Easy Paycheck
A fantasy about a temperamental, wand-wielding young man named Luke and the aphorism-uttering master who leads him to…
Film
Amigo: John Sayles’ Imperialist Prologue in the Philippines
John Sayles’ Amigo aspires more to educate than entertain, but it’s no less engrossing for that. Torn from…
Film
Magic Trip: An LSD Trip Best Avoided
The subject of Magic Trip is the LSD- powered, cross-country road movie orchestrated by novelist Ken Kesey in…
Film
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark: Won’t Someone Please Save Katie Holmes?
Die-hard horror fans (including this one) generally spend their adult lives hoping to re-experience the fear and awe…
Film
The First Beautiful Thing: An Italian Salute to a Very Strong Woman
If there’s a more complicated place than Italy to be a beautiful woman, the filmmaking world has yet…
Film
Crime After Crime: Battered Women Behind Bars
On its face, the title is misleading. Crime After Crime sounds like a repeat-offender case study, but instead…
Film
Griff the Invisible: Not-So-Adorable Defectives Fall in Love
An Australian misfits-in-love story manufactured from whole quirk, Griff the Invisible is more mannerism than movie. Griff (True…
Film
Life, Above All: A Plucky 12-Year-Old Heroine in South Africa
“AIDS” isn’t uttered until well past the halfway mark of Oliver Schmitz’s problematic South Africa–set tale about the…
Film
Atrocious: Something’s Blair Witchy in Spain
A Spanish Blair Witch DIY-er with a nutsy, preemptive title, this trifle scoots and skitters along guilelessly, as…
Film
The Whistleblower: Rachel Weisz Versus the Sex Traffickers
In Canadian director Larysa Kondracki’s The Whistleblower, shot in Romania, British babe Rachel Weisz plays a poor Nebraska…
Film
The Sky Turns: The Portrait of a Dying Spanish Village
An award winner at Rotterdam way back in 2005, Mercedes Álvarez’s The Sky Turns, a film that aims…
Film
One Day: Anne Hathaway Ventures Back to the Late ’80s
Emma (Anne Hathaway) is a too-serious would-be writer in coke-bottle glasses and combat boots. She’s nursing a crush…
Film
30 Minutes or Less: Why Would Anyone Want to Blow Up Jesse Eisenberg?
Danny McBride and Nick Swardson play Dwayne and Travis, a duo of going-nowhere types who, on the advice…
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…