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Brothers (Up) in Arms: A Trim, Healthy Enemy of the People Is a Strong...
Gaines and Kathleen McNanny in An Enemy of the People. (Joan Marcus) Coming in an election year, when so many politicians polarize the electorate by confusing greed with moral good, the Manhattan...
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A Beautiful Nightmare: Infamous for Its Brutally Honest Take on the...
Bond in Wake In Fright. Excelsior! The best movie of the week is also the best movie news of the year. Wake in Fright, the long-lost 1971 Australian masterpiece, has been found, restored and redeemed...
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Spread Thin: Jason Micallef’s Script is Blue-Ribbon Worthy, but Jim Field...
Garner in Butter. Butter hasn’t had this much attention on the screen since Marlon Brando thought up new X-rated things to do with dairy products in Last Tango in Paris. No artery clogging to fear in...
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Swampwater: The Paperboy Is a Long Way Off His Route In This Sunburnt Adaptation
McConaughey and Efron in The Paperboy. One by one, the punishments suffered last month at the Toronto film circus are arriving to pollute the screens at home. Next week, get ready for a diabolical...
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For Grace, To Err is Divine: Entrenched in Suburbia, A Religious Cold War...
Shannon, Arrington, Rudd and Asner in Grace. Polished and uniformly riveting, the four actors in Grace, a new play on Broadway by Craig Wright, directed by Dexter Bullard at the Cort, provide the grace...
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Going to the Dogs: With Seven Psychopaths, The Once-Masterful McDonagh Stays...
Harrelson and Walken in Seven Psychopaths. Garbage comes in all sizes, and every one of them seems to fit into a load of violent, hateful and incomprehensible trash called Seven Psychopaths. Written by...
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Affleck, Duck!: Ben’s Real-Life Spy Thriller, Argo, is Spooky Good
Affleck in Argo. It’s rare as a pink giraffe, but every once in a blue moon a movie comes along in which each piece fits seamlessly and every detail works. Argo is one of them. I have come to regard...
View ArticleThe Bellhop Rings Twice: Hardboiled Throwback Hotel Noir Aims for...
I’m all for refurbishing film noir and all the private eyes in trench coats, redheads in silk dressing gowns, sweaty weirdos chain-smoking unfiltered Camels and revolvers with silencers that go with...
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Of Sound Mind: Falling, the Tragic Tale of an Embattled Family Struggling to...
Everidge and Murney in Falling. Graceful writing, great acting, exquisite direction, suspense, profound subject matter—you rarely find even one of those elements in a contemporary play opening in...
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Ants in Your Pants: Nobody Walks is a Convoluted On-Screen Orgy That Doesn’t...
Thirlby in Nobody Walks. The last film by novice indie director Ry Russo-Young was an empty bottle called You Won’t Miss Me, about an alienated 23-year-old misfit just released from a psychiatric...
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Aging, Gracefully: Quel Plaisir! All Together is ‘a Sweet, Thoughtful and...
Bedos, Richard, Fonda, Rich and Chaplin in All Together. Jane Fonda’s first French-speaking film in 40 years finds her leading a joyous ensemble of septuagenarians in a sweet, thoughtful and spirited...
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Sexual Healing: The Sessions Breathes New Life Into Oft-Avoided Subject
Hawkes and Hunt in The Sessions. Sex and the disabled may still be a difficult topic to some, but at the movies it’s a hot-button theme whose time has come, with numerous examples of candor on film....
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Atlas, Drugged: This Colossal Misuse of Cast, Crew and Cash Unceremoniously...
Jim Broadbent and Hanks in Cloud Atlas. (Warner Bros. Pictures) Almost three hours long, a lugubrious sludge of mud soup called Cloud Atlas deserves a limp nod for pure guts, I suppose, but what I’d...
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Full Bloom: A Light Shines Through as The Black Tulip Blossoms Amidst Harsh...
A wedding at Lake Qarga, Kabul, in The Black Tulip. Afghanistan has no film industry, which makes a new movie called The Black Tulip, about good people seeking some kind of normal life in modern Kabul...
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Sleep Tight, Don’t Let The Doorman Bite: This Everyday Joe Will Have You...
Tosar in Sleep Tight. Sleep Tight is a creepy—but highly effective and superbly made—horror movie from Spain in which the monster is spine-tinglingly human. The logo in the ads reads “Someone Is...
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Cruise Control: With Denzel and Zemeckis in the Cockpit, Flight Takes Off and...
Washington in Flight. Denzel Washington is such a sturdy, reliable actor that his name on the screen has become synonymous with that of hero (with the obvious exception of Training Day). So it’s hard...
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Water Shock: ‘Eco-Apocalyptic Nail-Biter’ The Bay Takes Tired Found-Footage...
Jane McNeill in The Bay. A horror film by the estimable, sober-minded Barry Levinson? Why not? The veteran director of such earnest endeavors as Rain Man, Diner, Bugsy and Sleepers has always...
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High-Strung: Performances in A Late Quartet Are Worthy of Standing Ovation,...
Ivanir, Hoffman, Keener and Walken in A Late Quartet. In A Late Quartet, a somber, moody and uneven film about chamber music and the dedicated professional musicians who devote their lives to playing...
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Flickers of Inspiration: Festival of Lights’s High-Wattage Narrative...
Mistry in Festival of Lights. Well-intentioned but so clumsily executed by Indo-Guyanese writer-director Shundell Prasad that whole scenes seem to be missing, Festival of Lights is about the plight...
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Director Mendes Revives 007 with Skyfall, Stripping Excessive Novelties from...
Craig and Bardem in Skyfall. The big question the pessimists are asking about Skyfall, the 23rd entry in the James Bond franchise: Does 007 still have a license to keep an audience alert? The answer:...
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