Dark Shadows
Dark Shadows, Tim Burton’s film of the popular camp-gothic soap opera from the ’60s and early ’70s, is silly and over the top. But it has a marvelous, billowing look, and it’s quite entertaining.
Marvel’s The Avengers
Writer-director Joss Whedon, the creator of the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, saves the world from destruction yet again in the first of the summer blockbusters, Marvel’s The Avengers. The adventure is moderately enjoyable but rather exhausting.
Monsieur Lazhar
Movies about education are seldom convincing; their depiction of what goes on in the classroom hardly ever tallies with our own experiences. So the sweet and poignant Quebecois film Monsieur Lazhar is a rare pleasure.
Bully
Lee Hirsch’s documentary Bully rings false from beginning to end. The film wants to sound alarm bells about the prevalence of bullying in public schools, which is certainly a very real problem. But like the recently completed trilogy of TV documentaries about the child murders at Robin Hood Hills and the young men who were evidently scapegoated for the crime, the movie has a tawdry, voyeuristic quality that keeps distracting you from its alleged agenda.
John Carter
There’s no faster way for a movie to earn the disdain of critics than to rack up exorbitant costs and then fall on its face....
The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games, Gary Ross’s film version of the first novel in Suzanne Collins’s young adult sci-fi trilogy, is a predictable hit after the biggest opening weekend since ancient Rome sta...
The Woman in Black
The Gothic The Woman in Black, based on a Susan Hill novel and set in turn-of-the-century England, is so terrifying that it feels like a classic of its type.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
It takes a tremendous amount of delicacy and tact to pull off a movie
about 9/11 without making the audience feel it's been strong-armed.
Stephen Daldry's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, based on the Jonathan Safran Foer novel of the same name, puts you through the wringer.
Man on a Ledge
Man on a Ledge is a nifty little entertainment about an ex-cop
(Sam Worthington) framed for stealing a diamond owned by a ruthless
magnate (Ed Harris). He escapes from custody and stages a suicide
threat on the window ledge of Harris's hotel as a diversion while his
allies break into his accuser's vault to prove the theft was a hoax.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
David Fincher's film of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo should please fans of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy....
The Iron Lady
The Iron Lady, which stars Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher, is the worst biopic since Nixon. It's so cautious that it lacks a coherent point of
view, and it's so scattered that it tells you almost exactly nothing.
The Interrupters: Directed by Steve James
Documentarian Steve James has a journalist's nose for a great story. His beat is the
challenges faced by low-income city kids, in this case young Chicagoans whose lives are blighted by the cycle of violence.