Nothing happens in Mike Leigh's Another Year -- and everything happens. A miracle of virtuoso acting and understated filmmaking, Leigh's film is a ye...
Rabbit Hole is one of 2010's most affecting and well-wrought films, the story of a couple trying to regain their footing eight months after the death of their four-year-old son.
Derek Cianfrance's film is a marvel of raw, real acting that puts you right into the lives of two people -- initially happy, ultimately unhappy -- going into great detail about these characters while only sketching their stories.
With the deeply soulful performance by Javier Bardem in the central role, director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has created a story that captures the human dilemma at both its most simple and its most complex.
It's hard to remember a film that rises to the level of emotional and dramatic incoherence of Shana Feste's Country Strong. You watch a movie like th...
Bowser's documentary shows Ochs to be driven by his political beliefs, shattered by the deaths of John F. Kennedy and disillusioned by the ineffectiveness of protest against the Vietnam War.
The sole suspense lies in figuring out which of the supporting players will survive the trip. That's because there's barely anything else of interest amidst the standard-issue action setpieces.
Stephen Dorff has been a working actor since he was a pre-teen - and launched himself into features at 19 with The Power of One in 1992. But while he...
This is a Scandinavian treat: a movie that reveals itself slowly, then goes places you didn't think it dared. Skarsgard proves once again that he's a leading man of depth and nuance.
When we finally reached the island - when it became clear we were going to be castaways on land, rather than adrift in the dark on the Caribbean for t...
Vince Vaughn's motor-mouth riffing stopped being funny several films ago. So what we get now are movies as slack and slow-moving as The Dilemma.
The Green Hornet is a mixed bag -- not an abject failure, but still, not a film that recognizes its own strengths. It gets away with a lot -- and is often more entertaining and enjoyable than it has any right to be.
Every Day swims in mock profundity and has the feel of a movie made specifically for a forgiving festival audience. Its good intentions are largely wasted.
Yes, Stellan Skarsgard says, he's in the midst of filming David Fincher's version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the biggest export Sweden has pr...
Gervais was the only thing that made the patently bogus Golden Globe Awards broadcast bearable Sunday night. His point -- and it's the truth -- was that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association is a joke.
I may have seen her before, but it wasn't until I saw Applause that the name of actress Paprika Steen stuck in my head. Now I can't get her off my mind.
With The Way Back, Peter Weir jumps the tracks, making a movie with amazing scope but little drama. The level of tension in the film is like a toothache -- constant, gnawing but not particularly enjoyable.
She's been a working actor for almost 30 years - having dropped out of Purchase College of the State University of New York to take a role on All My C...
Ivan Reitman's No Strings Attached at least partially reclaims Reitman's reputation as a director, which, for a while, had made "An Ivan Reitman Film...
Im Sang-soo's The Housemaid, opening in limited release, starts out looking like one thing, then shifts gears midway through to become something else ...
On Thursday, the opening day of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, my actual Sundance day began and ended with the opening night screening of Susan Rost...
Film festival programmers rarely create festivals full of films built around a single theme. Yet quite unintentionally, I spent Friday seeing five films that dealt with the idea of abandonment, reunion and reconciliation.
Three of the four films I saw at Sundance 2011 on Saturday not only fit the bill for 'comedy,' but acquit themselves nicely. And each comes from a different country -- the U.S., Ireland and Norway.
Images -- political and otherwise -- often have only the most tenuous relationship with reality. As it happened, that idea was a significant factor in several of the films I saw at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival on Sunday.
The Oscars come around so late in the process that it's like electing a prom queen... after the seniors have graduated and moved away to college.
