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If Nannies Could Fly: On the 50th Anniversary of Mary Poppins, a Look Back at...
Tom Hanks as Walt Disney and Emme Thompson as P. L. Travers in Saving Mr. Banks. Hollywood rarely sends itself a valentine, much less a Christmas card, but Saving Mr. Banks, a mouthful of cotton candy...
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Night and Day: In Some Velvet Morning, Nothing Is as It Seems
Stanley Tucci not-so-subtly courts Alive Eve in Some Velvet Morning. The first 80 minutes or so of this long-winded, 82-minute two-hander, written and directed by playwright Neil LaBute, finds the...
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Big Bad Wolf: Martin Scorsese’s Latest Is a Showpiece of Wicked Cinematic...
Big macher. The Wolf of Wall Street has been awarded a nose-thumbing Bronx cheer by some critics as noisy, vulgar, flashy, disgusting and over the top— the same reasons they adored the talented but...
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A Death in the Family: August: Osage County Stumbles on the Silver Screen
Meryl Streep, center, as Violet, the domineering Weston family matriarch. Like a general loaded with medals in a ticker tape parade, the Broadway play August: Osage County arrives on the screen with...
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What the Dickens? The Invisible Woman Explores a Scandalous Victorian Affair
An affair to remember. The holiday season—when some version of A Christmas Carol crowds the TV schedule daily, turning Scrooge into as popular a household name as Santa—seems like a perfect time for a...
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Rex Reed: The Worst Films of 2013
1. TO THE WONDER Directed by: Terrence Malick "Plotless and almost mute, To the Wonder is the kind of fiasco that keeps film-festival programmers salivating and discriminating audiences stampeding...
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Rex Reed: The Best Films of 2013
1. PHILOMENA Directed by: Stephen Frears "Philomena is not only my favorite film of 2013, but one of the most eloquent, powerful and perfect movies I have ever seen. A focused and triumphant...
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Here’s Looking at Them: A Tearful Toast to Those We Lost in the Year That...
James Gandolfini. (Photo by Vera Anderson/WireImage) From catastrophic weather and violent school tragedies to increasing numbers of same-sex marriages and elected minorities, 2013 was a year of...
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In Big Bad Wolves, Fairy Tales Can Come True
Doval'e Glickman in Big Bad Wolves. A torture-cum-horror thriller in Hebrew may be a game changer in the fabric of acceptable Israeli film-industry tradition, but critics and audiences there have...
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Jack Ryan’s Roots: Shadow Recruit Explores the Early Years of Tom Clancy’s...
Chris Pine is Jack Ryan in Shadow Recruit. The dim star wattage in this fifth rehash is palpable from the start, with Chris Pine, on sabbatical from the Star Trek franchise, playing Tom Clancy’s CIA...
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Teach Her Tonight
Sutton Foster is wrapping up a two-week residency at Café Carlyle. (Photo by Stephen Sorokoff) As much as I enjoyed Sutton Foster as the perky but brassy-voiced star of the Broadway revival of Cole...
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Teen Sex Comedy G.B.F. Is Frustratingly Stupid
The bitch queens of both sexes in G.B.F. are as witty as an S.T.D. In this cheesy, brain-dead teenage effort to join the “Is everybody gay?” movement fueled by TV sitcoms, three competitive high school...
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Hope Springs Eternal: Vanessa Hudgens Shines in Gimme Shelter
Vanessa Hudgens as Apple on the Greyhound to salvation. Grim and unsettling, Gimme Shelter is a social tract about the benefits of getting into the homeless shelter game. It’s a true story about how...
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The Quiet Man: On the Heels of Nebraska, a Sensitive Will Forte Proves His...
Will Forte and Maxine Peake in Run & Jump. After opening the doors to an impressive new acting career as Bruce Dern’s loyal son in the wonderful Alexander Payne film Nebraska, former Saturday Night...
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Come On-a My House: Outside Mullingar Looks at Love and Property in the Irish...
Brian F. O’Byrne and Debra Messing in Outside Mullingar. (Photo by Joan Marcus) Languorous and peculiar, John Patrick Shanley’s Outside Mullingar means to be a poetic discourse on the subject of...
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A Home of Their Own: Labor Day Is a Sensitive Adaptation of Joyce Maynard’s...
Josh Brolin and Kate Winslet are lovers in Labor Day. Leave it to Kate Winslet’s warmth, intelligence and sincerity to bring us out of the winter doldrums of January leftovers with Jason Reitman’s...
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Sentimental Education: Powerful Performances From Andy Garcia and Vera...
Vera Farmiga and Andy Garcia in At Middleton. This satisfying debut feature by Adam Rodgers, who co-wrote the smart screenplay with Glenn German, is not exactly flawless, but entertaining dialogue and...
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Half Past Dead: The Wait Is Cinematic Purgatory
The Wait indisputably falls into the category of Valium torpor. The Wait is 96 minutes of surrealistic gibberish about … well, absolutely nothing. At least nothing discernible by the naked eye or...
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Trading Places: The Pretty One Takes on the Good Twin/Bad Twin Conceit
Zoe Kazan had the dual chore of playing a pair of twin sisters in The Pretty One, starring Jake Johnson. A tale of identical twins so laconic it practically dozes off right in front of you, The Pretty...
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Crime Spree: Everything and Nothing Happens in The Outsider
The Outsider is an underground crawl through the seedier sections of Hollywood. Another contrived programmer for which Jason Statham was apparently unavailable, The Outsider stars his stand-in, Craig...
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