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Review: Precious

Purple's prose makes for wrenching melodrama
If you thought Celie in Alice Walker's The Color Purple had a tough time of it, wait till you get a load of Precious.

By PETER KEOUGH | November 18, 2009

Review: The Messenger

The Iraq War hits suburbia
The Iraq War hits suburbia

By SHAULA CLARK | November 17, 2009

Despite what you may think, it's not a Sandra Bullock movie
It’s tough for any self-respecting critic to refrain from joyously tackling a Sandra Bullock movie — so it’s a good thing The Blind Side isn’t one.

By CHRIS FARAONE | November 17, 2009

Review: Bronson

Tom Hardy is mesmerizing
From Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn comes a fantasy bio-pic of Britain's notorious Charlie Bronson, a larger-than-life character who, after swiping his identity from Charles Bronson transformed from bare-knuckle prizefighter into "Britain's most violent prisoner."

By SHAULA CLARK | November 17, 2009

Review: Planet 51

Even aliens get paranoid sometimes
The opening for the latest animated kids’ fantasy is promising — but it’s for another movie.

By PETER KEOUGH | November 18, 2009

Review: Pirate Radio

Richard Curtis’s boat rocks
A rusty, red-painted trawler bobs in the waves of the North Atlantic. Inside is a claustrophobic warren of rooms: tiny, brine-smelling bunks, a well-stocked bar, and, crucially, a broadcast booth, its shelves crammed with the latest 45s and LPs, its turntables manned in shifts by a motley squad of hirsute rogues.

By MIKE MILIARD | November 16, 2009

Review: 2012

Doom and doomer: the bullshit hits the fans
Doomsday is good therapy. What does it matter that billions die if that brings a family together in one big hug?

By PETER KEOUGH | November 12, 2009

Review: The Box

David Kelly boxes himself in
First-semester social-science students would wince at the overreaching metaphors in Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly’s latest Rorschach test.

By CHRIS FARAONE | November 10, 2009

Review: Black Dynamite

A rush of ’70s nostalgia you never knew you had
His pimp hand is strong but fair. He keeps his resplendent Afro, rippling pecs, and nunchakus well-oiled. He’s Black Dynamite. In this glorious retro homage to ’70s blaxploitation cinema, director Scott Sanders isn’t so much traversing I’m Gonna Git You, Sucka territory as he is making a full-length Grindhouse spoof trailer — and doing a shockingly awesome job of it.

By SHAULA CLARK | November 11, 2009

Review: Within the Whirlwind

Emily Watson faces her accusers
Those eager to compare the Obama administration to a Communist dictatorship might check out this story based on the memoirs of the poet Evgenia Ginzburg.

By PETER KEOUGH | November 11, 2009

Review: William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe

What’s it like being the young daughters of this John Brown–like presence?
“Bill” Kunstler was the flamboyant, contentious, proudly revolutionary lawyer for the Chicago Eight, a handsome man with an unruly mane of black-and-white that was as impressive and iconic as the head of hair on Susan Sontag.

By GERALD PEARY | November 11, 2009

Review: (Untitled)

Jonathan Parker's a little too comfortably bourgeois
Woody Allen might have passed on making this film 35 years ago because it was too dated and middlebrow.

By PETER KEOUGH | November 11, 2009

Review: Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon

Spellbound with spreadsheets, but without character development
Despite being pummeled by Mary Mazzio’s infomercial-like film into believing so, I still think that the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship is a worthwhile cause.

By PETER KEOUGH | November 11, 2009

Review: The Maid

Sebastián Silva’s textured routines
Sebastián Silva’s film follows the routine of Raquel (Catalina Saavedra), a maid for a wealthy Chilean family who’s passed her 20th year of service.

By MARIANNA FAYNSHTEYN | November 11, 2009

Review: The Men Who Stare at Goats

Bleating hearts tame Goats
Here’s a subject that really could have used a Stanley Kubrick or a John Frankenheimer or a Robert Altman. But are there any great cinematic satirists left, auteurs with the knack for black comedy and cold-blooded irony?

By PETER KEOUGH | November 06, 2009

Review: Brief Interviews With Hideous Men

John Krasinski takes on David Foster Wallace and succeeds
Bleeding admiration for the David Foster Wallace stories on which it’s based, John Krasinski’s directorial debut follows Sara Quinn (Julianne Nicholson) as she interviews men about their sexual proclivities for her master’s thesis.

By JASON O'BRYAN | November 05, 2009

Review: Michael Jackson's This Is It

Is this it?
The Star Wars –style titles that begin Kenny Ortega’s hastily assembled Michael Jackson tribute documentary explain that the film has been whittled down from 100 hours of behind-the-scenes video shot between last April and June during rehearsals for the King of Pop’s planned 50-date “This Is It” London concert series.

By BRETT MICHEL | November 12, 2009

Review: Disney's A Christmas Carol

State-of-the-art technology allows actors to reach new heights of hamminess
Charles Dickens made a mint with readings of A Christmas Carol , but a century and a half of technological progress has not been kind to the property.

By PETER KEOUGH | November 09, 2009

Review: The Horse Boy

A compelling real-life adventure
Rupert Isaacson and Kristin Neff seem the best of parents and yet they’re worn down by their four-year-old autistic son, Rowan, with his four-hour tantrums, his rejection of toilet training, his inability to answer to his name.

By GERALD PEARY | November 04, 2009

Review: Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America

Imagine if Ingmar Bergman had made The Blair Witch Project
Tony Stone’s “love letter to the Vikings’ discovery of the New World, pagan iconography, brute manliness, and simpler times” is set in the simpler (?) time of 1007 AD.

By JEFFREY GANTZ | November 04, 2009