Film
It’s Kind of a Funny Story: Zach Galifianakis Becomes the Sad Clown
Seemingly designed to get every New York City honors student face-punched at college, this film chronicles a privileged…
Film
The Freebie: A Marital Contract in Adultery
This likable little indie shares what might be called the Humpday paradox, minus the gay thing. In the…
Film
Sleep Furiously: A Tone Poem in Wales
A loving portrait of place, Gideon Koppel’s tribute to a very small town in Wales isn’t the kind…
Film
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger: More of the Same From Woody Allen
Kept afloat by an excellent cast, Woody Allen’s fourth movie about callow Londoners recklessly pursuing emotional wreckage begins…
Film
Life as We Know It: Katherine Heigl as Unfit Mother
Set up on a blind date by their married best friends, Holly (Katherine Heigl) and Messer (Josh Duhamel)…
Film
Waiting for Superman: Bill Gates Joins the Charter-School Bandwagon
Davis Guggenheim’s call-to-arms documentary on the failures of the U.S. public-education system—thoroughly laudable in intention if maddening in…
Film
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…
Film
Cell 211: A Tense Prison Riot in Spain
Even before his first official day on the job in a Spanish prison, a newly hired guard (Alberto…
Film
Let Me In: Not Bad, but Not So Good as the Original
Modish blankness tries to pass for clarity in Let Me In, Cloverfield director Matt Reeves’ Americanized remake of…
Film
Freakonomics: Read the Book Instead
A quartet of uneven TV pilots posing as a full-length documentary, Seth Gordon’s anthology Freakonomics pulls case studies…
Film
Buried: Ryan Reynolds Gets Dirty
Paul (Ryan Reynolds), an American truck driver for a KBR-type contractor in Iraq, is captured in an insurgent…
Film
Bran Nue Dae: A Bit of Glee From Down Under
Rabbit-Proof Fence meets High School Musical. In this film version of a 1990 Australian stage musical—the first, it’s…
Film
Heartbreaker: Handsome French Actors in a Vacuum
For the past half-decade, Romain Duris has been French cinema’s go-to brooder. Diversifying his saturnine handsomeness, Duris gives…
Film
The Sicilian Girl: A Mafia Story That Deserves a Documentary Instead
The facts are more gripping than the filmmaking in Marco Amenta’s routine docudrama about tenacious teen informer Rita…
Film
Jack Goes Boating: Philip Seymour Hoffman Proves Surprisingly Buoyant
Jack Goes Boating is Philip Seymour Hoffman’s movie—it’s his directorial debut; he stars as its namesake sad sack;…
Film
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps: Gordon Gekko Repents–or Does He?
Oliver Stone’s sequel doesn’t have the clean, fable-like arc of its predecessor, Wall Street, the tale of the…
Film
Easy A: Emma Stone’s Got Talent
As far as teen comedies informed by 10th-grade English syllabi go, Easy A, partly inspired by The Scarlet…
Film
Bunny and the Bull: Brits Traverse an Imaginary Europe
Even as the Michael Bays and James Camerons of this world push movies ever more seamlessly into digital…
Film
Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel: Like an Elegy for the Mad Men Era
The one thing no one—particularly its 84-year-old subject—wants to discuss in this very authorized, adulatory documentary is aging.…
Film
The Town: Ben Affleck Robs Banks
Directing himself as a verifiable big-movie lead after some time in supporting-actor Triple-A ball, Ben Affleck models a…