Film
The Help: Emma Stone Lives Up to Her Hype
A fast-talking, eye-rolling snarler, Emma Stone wears a truly terrible perm to play the allegedly dowdy Skeeter, a…
Film
Project Nim: A Chimp Tragedy
Not every member of Homo sapiens who sees Project Nim will be moved to pledge membership in PETA.…
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The Tree: Charlotte Gainsbourg as Misbehaving Widow
No one grieves onscreen quite like Charlotte Gainsbourg, here playing Dawn, made a widow within the first 10…
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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…
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Blank City: Indie Film Before the Term Existed
Blank City is a self-defeating, user-friendly primer on a group of films whose aura was enhanced by the…
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The Names of Love: France and Its Problems
Nothing screams “French crossover comedy” like jokes about Auschwitz and childhood sexual abuse, the main rib-ticklers of Michel…
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The Change-Up: Jason Bateman Shoulda Swapped Movies Instead
A uniquely Freudian entry in the body-switching-comedy canon, The Change-Up stars Jason Bateman as anal-retentive lawyer/family man Dave…
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The Devil’s Double: News Flash: Saddam Hussein’s Family Was Messed Up
The embellishment of a memoir by Latif Yahia, once forcibly employed as a public stand-in for Saddam Hussein’s…
Film
Another Earth: Two Planets, More Troubles
Brit Marling, the lithe, stunning co-writer and star of Mike Cahill’s Another Earth, plays Rhoda, a 17-year-old who…
Film
Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest: A Love Letter to the Fractious Band
So much petty drama has clouded the release of Michael Rapaport’s A Tribe Called Quest documentary. One version…
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Sarah’s Key: French Complicity in the Holocaust
Exposing a little-known piece of Holocaust history—the Vel’ d’Hiv roundup, in which French police arrested thousands of Jews…
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Crazy, Stupid, Love: Steve Carell as Lothario
After Emily (Julianne Moore) tells Cal (Steve Carell), her husband of 20-plus years, that she wants a divorce,…
Film
Attack the Block: London Teens Battle Space Aliens
The smartest, funniest cheap monster-movie import this side of June’s Trollhunter, Attack the Block is a near-perfectly balanced…
Film
Salvation Boulevard: When Did James Bond Get Religion?
Back in 2001, George Ratliff made a fine documentary called Hell House, about a Texas evangelical church’s elaborate…
Film
Summer of Goliath: Part of a Salute to Nicolás Pereda
Between 2007 and 2010, Nicolás Pereda wrote and directed four features (all being screened this week, with the…
Film
A Not So Still Life: The Fall and Rise of Local Artist Ginny Ruffner
The story of Ginny Ruffner’s cruelly interrupted career—by a brain- and body- damaging 1991 car crash—is well known…
Film
Into Eternity: More Nukes, More Waste, More Fear
Danish artist Michael Madsen’s Into Eternity documents an anti-monument to negativity. Admirably forward-thinking, if undeniably quixotic, Finland’s government…
Film
Tabloid: Sex, Celebrity, and Mormons
After veering into politics for his previous couple of documentaries (Standard Operating Procedure, The Fog of War), Errol…
Film
Redland: Grim Survival in the Great Depression
This dark, hallucinatory fable begins and climaxes with two of the most audacious sex-meets-death set-pieces in recent indie-movie…
Film
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Decent Adaptation of the Lisa See Novel
Nina (Li Bingbing) is a Shanghai career girl who drops plans to move to New York when she…