Film
Despicable Me: Steve Carell as Summertime Grinch
As the lights were dimming before a preview screening of Despicable Me, the 6-year-old who lives in my…
Film
Women Without Men: Forbidden Love in 1950s Iran
Adapted from Shahrnoush Parsipour’s novel of the same name, Women Without Men opens with an act of suicide…
Film
The Girl Who Played With Fire: Part II of the Stieg Larsson Trilogy
This grim and bloody adaptation of the second volume of the late Stieg Larsson’s bestselling Millennium trilogy—featuring journalist…
Film
[REC] 2: A Spanish Zombie Retread
The de facto highlight of the horrific [REC] 2—the 28-minutes-later sequel to the Spanish zombie flick Americanized as…
Film
The Killer Inside Me: Jessica Alba Is Beaten to Death
The premise of Michael Winterbottom’s adaptation of Jim Thompson’s 1952 crime novel could be summed up in a…
Film
Harry Brown: Michael Caine Gets All Death Wish
Purely for the reliable pleasure of Michael Caine’s company, I came ready to praise what threatened to be…
Film
OSS 117: Lost in Rio: A Favorite French Spy Spoof Returns From SIFF
This sequel to the delightful French 2006 retro romp OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies now revives a…
Film
Cyrus: Jonah Hill Seriously Creeps Us Out
In this freakishly engrossing black comedy about excessively mothered men and the women who enable them, the excellent…
Film
Winters Bone: Like Deliverance Without Canoes
Like a Sundance film from the early ’80s (before the festival was so named), this Sundance prizewinner starts…
Film
Daddy Longlegs: Bad Parenting in NYC
Suppose what we call “parenting” is just a situation in which overgrown kids take care of smaller ones?…
Film
Holy Rollers: What’s a Nice Jewish Boy Like You Doing With the Drugs?
It’s hard to determine which group Holy Rollers considers to be more villainous: Hasidic Jews, or former Hasidic…
Film
I Am Love: Tilda Swinton in Mad, Glorious Passion
This extravagant melodrama starring Tilda Swinton is both ridiculous and sublime. As the Russian-born trophy wife of a…
Film
Please Give: Catherine Keener Refuses to Feel Liberal Guilt
Nicole Holofcener’s fourth feature is, for the most part, witty and engrossing. Kate (Catherine Keener) and Alex (Oliver…
Film
Toy Story 3: Pixar’s Plastic Superheroes Consider Their Mortality
Fifteen years after ushering in a new era of CGI animation, and 11 years after a colossally successful…
Film
Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work: An Infomercial for a Product We Know Too Well
Opening with a close-up of the crow’s feet around its subject’s eyes and expanding to reveal her Botox-frozen…
Film
Trash Humpers: Director Harmony Korine Will Answer Your Questions
Harmony Korine, aging enfant terrible and self-proclaimed “most American” of American indies, finds his level and brings it…
Film
SIFF Week 4: 15 New Picks & Pans
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 9 7 p.m., SIFF Cinema Monogamy As his feature debut, writer/director Dana Adam Shapiro, whose 2005…
Film
The Karate Kid: Jackie Chan Remakes the 80s Demi-Classic
Like the 1984 original, this new Kid begins with an uprooting. Young Dre Parker (Jaden Smith) and his…
Film
Bass Ackwards: Much Introspection in a Small VW Bus
To an extent, Linas Phillips has already made this movie as the 2006 documentary Walking to Werner. Now,…
Film
Living in Emergency: Meet the MDs of Medecins Sans Frontieres
Not interested in heroicizing the four Western doctors it follows through their missions in the Congo and Liberia,…