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Review: Safe House

Daniel Espinosa's spy thriller
Daniel Espinosa's over-edited but engaging spy thriller delves into edgy territory untouched by any of the numerous movies it imitates: it has Brendan Gleeson do an American accent.
By PETER KEOUGH | February 15, 2012

Review: The Vow

Notebook knock-off
Michael Sucsy's The Vow's tag line, "based on a true story," is the only sincere moment in a film that will bring you to tears — of boredom.
By MONICA CASTILLO | February 15, 2012

Review: The Secret World of Arrietty

The best children's movie in a long time
The most touching love story and best children's movie in a long time, Hiromasa Yonebayashi's adaptation of Mary Norton's book The Borrowers employs old-fashioned animation techniques to create a world that is familiar, uncanny, and luminous.
By PETER KEOUGH | February 15, 2012

Review: Rampart

Oren Moverman's portrait of a rotten cop
The rotten cop flick has become a mini-genre of sorts, a subset of noir, going back at least to Orson Welles's Touch of Evil .
By PETER KEOUGH | February 15, 2012

Review: Declaration of War

A puzzler of a cancer drama
A baby with a brain tumor is no laughing matter.
By ALICIA POTTER | February 16, 2012

Review: This Means War

Spy vs. Spy territory
What promises to be a modern Jules and Jim (until you realize it's directed by a 43-year-old who calls himself "McG") quickly devolves into Spy vs. Spy territory, only with incompetently staged and edited action and little of that ol' Mad magazine zing.
By BRETT MICHEL | February 16, 2012

Review: Coriolanus

Filming the Bard
In a line of fascist-style stagings of the Bard from Orson Welles's 1937 black-shirted Julius Caesar to Richard Loncraine's brown-shirted Richard III (1998), Ralph Fiennes sets his lean and hungry take on Shakespeare's tragedy in a mo dern-day war zone, paring the play to a brisk two hours.
By PETER KEOUGH | February 16, 2012

Review: W.E.

Madonna's directorial debut
Nobody does vulgarity like Madonna, especially when she's being tasteful, as in her directorial debut of this grotesque biopic.
By PETER KEOUGH | February 07, 2012

Review: The Oscar Nominated Short Films 2012: Live Action

The Oscar nominees for Live Action Shorts come down to five conventional narratives.
The Oscar nominees for Live Action Shorts come down to five conventional narratives.
By GERALD PEARY | February 07, 2012

Review: Journey 2: The Mysterious Island

Brad Peyton's sequel
I liked the tiny elephants and the Rock bouncing berries off his pecs, but Brad Peyton's sequel is as bad as the 2008 original.
By PETER KEOUGH | February 07, 2012

The best films of 2011 are not the ballyhooed

Also-rans
The films this year were kind of like the current field of Republican presidential candidates: some are entertaining, but there's no clear frontrunner, and there's more attention on the flashiest and least substantial than on the more thoughtful and genuine.
By PETER KEOUGH | December 21, 2011

Review: Young Adult

Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody's first re-teaming since Juno
A baby, a high school, and esoteric pop culture references once again figure prominently — albeit less glibly — in director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody's first re-teaming since Juno.
By ALICIA POTTER | December 13, 2011

Review: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1

Unfilmable and inscrutable
How do you film Stephenie Meyer's unfilmable Breaking Dawn ?
By ANN LEWINSON | November 22, 2011

Review: Hugo

A valentine to early cinema
Martin Scorsese goes Spielberg with Hugo, as dumbed-down as the shortening of the title of Brian Selznick's Caldecott winner implies.
By ANN LEWINSON | November 21, 2011

Review: Passione

John Turturro tours his beloved city for this documentary
Charles Aznavour and Édith Piaf, move over!
By GERALD PEARY | November 22, 2011

Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

The final chapter
"It's complicated," says Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) early on in this last installment of his epic as he tries to explain some obscure plot element.
By PETER KEOUGH | July 18, 2011

Review: Project Nim

Absurd and sad
Once regarded as cuddly, chimpanzees seem downright demonic following the incident in Connecticut in which a pet ape destroyed somebody's face.
By PETER KEOUGH | July 12, 2011

Review: Horrible Bosses

Overplayed quirks
After two comedies, it's clear Seth Gordon is good at making . . . documentaries.
By BRETT MICHEL | July 12, 2011

Review: Larry Crowne

A lighter-than-air trifle
Coming 15 years after That Thing You Do!, Tom Hanks's second, confident outing as a feature director finds him co-writing a lighter-than-air trifle with old family friend Nia Vardalos, who's made nothing but awful films since initially charming audiences with My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
By BRETT MICHEL | July 05, 2011

Review: Just Like Us

Leave the directing to someone else
This brainchild of Egyptian-American comedian Ahmed Ahmed is basically a collection of his home movies as he travels from the US alongside comics like Maz Jobrani and Whitney Cummings to perform stand-up in Dubai, Beirut, Cairo, Riyadh, and back.
By BRETT MICHEL | July 05, 2011