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Review: Big Miracle

Ken Kwapis's take on a true story from 1988
Taking a tip from the oil industry, Hollywood has started exploiting Alaska. Following in the tracks of The Grey is Ken Kwapis's take on a true story from 1988 about an effort to save gray whales trapped in the Arctic ice. Surprisingly, the film offers genuine complexity.

By: PETER KEOUGH | January 31, 2012

Review: One for the Money

Julie Anne Robinson's insipid adaptation
TV director Julie Anne Robinson's insipid adaptation of this first volume in Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series has more in common with Young Adult than with the average gumshoe yarn.

By: PETER KEOUGH | January 31, 2012

Review: The Innkeepers

Ti West's spook show
Ti West's spook show is atmospheric (thanks to the terrific hotel setting) and frequently funny; but the plot line is choppy, the dialogue often unnecessary, and the scares too sparse.

By: PEG ALOI | January 31, 2012

Review: The Grey

Man vs. wolves
At the center of this superior stranded-men-picked-off-by-external-threat thriller is Ottway, an anguished loner powerfully played by Liam Neeson.

By: BETSY SHERMAN | January 26, 2012

Review: Albert Nobbs

Gender identity crisis
Lesbianism doesn't exist as a cogent category in 19th century Ireland, which could explain why Albert Nobbs (Glenn Close), a woman disguised for years as a man and employed as a Dublin waiter, has no personal understanding of who she is, her identity, or what she feels.

By: GERALD PEARY | January 26, 2012

Review: A Separation

Family drama
Somehow, despite an increasingly repressive regime that has jailed many prominent filmmakers, including the world renowned auteur Jafar Panahi, Iranian cinema continues to produce some of the world's subtlest and most illuminating films about the relationships between men and women, and the conflicts inherent in all social units, starting with the family.

By: PETER KEOUGH | January 26, 2012

Review: Haywire

Soderbergh phones it in
Despite some thrilling combat choreography executed with flair by MMA champ Gina Carano, Steven Soderbergh clearly phoned it in here. The barely-there plot involves Mallory (Carano), a double-crossed Black Ops agent who goes rogue in an uninteresting search for revenge.

By: THOMAS PAGE MCBEE | January 24, 2012

Review: Crazy Horse

Wiseman behind the scenes at a revered dance institution
In La Danse — The Paris Opera Ballet , Frederick Wiseman looked behind the scenes at a revered dance institution. In his new documentary he examines a dance institution of a different sort, the cabaret bar of the title, a Parisian pop-cultural icon and tourist mecca dedicated to artistically ambitious "nude chic" dancing.

By: PETER KEOUGH | January 24, 2012

Review: Miss Bala

Gerardo Naranjo's superb new feature
Gerardo Naranjo's superb new feature, Miss Bala , brilliantly draws on the conflicted personality of a young beauty pageant contestant as a tragically stark emblem of Mexico's all-enveloping drug wars.

By: PATRICK Z. MCGAVIN | January 24, 2012

Review: Red Tails

The struggles and triumphs of the Tuskegee Airmen
With a title that refers not to squirrels but to plane markings, Red Tails dramatizes the struggles and triumphs of African-American pioneers, the Tuskegee Airmen.

By: BETSY SHERMAN | January 24, 2012

Review: The best of the Ottawa International Animation Film Festival

Canadian animations
The Canadians produce the best animation programs and prove it again with this international selection.

By: PEG ALOI | January 24, 2012

Review: Underworld: Awakening

Brief but bloody
The Underworld series got long in the tooth early, but here, in the fourth installment (directed by Swede Måns Mårlind), it grows new fangs.

By: TOM MEEK | January 24, 2012

Review: Man on a Ledge

Clever if absurd heist film
Pablo F. Fenjves might not be Sidney Lumet, but his clever if absurd heist film does acknowledge its debt to the late, politically inclined director's Dog Day Afternoon .

By: PETER KEOUGH | January 26, 2012

Review: The Viral Factor

Run and gun
Made for a modest budget of $17 million — and feeling like it (who needs convincing explosions in an action movie?), Dante Lam's latest still gets the job done from a run-and-gun standpoint.

By: BRETT MICHEL | January 17, 2012

Review: Young Goethe in Love

Philipp Stölzl's portrait of the artist as a young scamp
In Philipp Stölzl's fanciful portrait of the artist as a young scamp, the future genius (Alexander Fehling) introduces himself as "Goethe with an 'oe'," earning a reputation as a pratfalling screw-up.

By: PETER KEOUGH | January 19, 2012

Review: 2011 Art House Project Shorts Program

Surreal poetry
Short films are the art of omission, and those in this outstanding Sundance program transform non-sequiturs into surreal poetry.

By: PETER KEOUGH | January 18, 2012

Review: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

An extremely exploitative and incredibly bad tale
Too soon? For Stephen Daldry's 9/11 drama, the right time is "never."

By: BRETT MICHEL | January 17, 2012

Review: Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos

Animated alchemical battles
The Fullmetal Alchemist series has expanded impressively, from the 2001 graphic novel, to the 2003 anime series and film to the 2009 reboot of the anime, and now Kazuya Murata's film, which picks up from the middle of the second anime reboot.

By: MADDY MYERS | January 17, 2012