Movies >>

Reviews

Review: Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness

Joseph Dorman's portrait of Aleichem
Not many these days are familiar with Aleichem's own story, or his other work, or his impact on Jewish culture and literature in general.

By: PETER KEOUGH | August 31, 2011

Review: The Debt

John Madden's smart, icy thriller
Based on the 2007 Israeli film Ha-Hov, the story weaves present and past together, with most of the action surrounding the fateful mission and the perilous web of duty, passion, and betrayal that still haunts the agents.

By: PEG ALOI | August 30, 2011

Review: The Hedgehog

Mona Achache's adaptation of Muriel Barbery's best-seller
Eleven-year-old Paloma (Garance Le Guillemic) agrees, and plans to kill herself on her 12th birthday because she doesn't want to end up like the other members of her family — goldfish in a bowl.

By: PETER KEOUGH | August 30, 2011

Review: The Myth of the American Sleepover

Adolescent initiation rites
David Robert Mitchell's impressive if derivative debut doesn't delve so much into a myth as a mini-genre.

By: PETER KEOUGH | August 31, 2011

Review: Mysteries of Lisbon

Raúl Ruiz's legacy
Ruiz's gorgeous, painterly visuals are shot from startling angles and work alongside his precise, anarchic, and gleefully absurd narrative to evoke a heightened reality that plumbs the mysteries of life.

By: PETER KEOUGH | August 23, 2011

Review: Spy Kids: All the Time in the World

S trictly for the kiddies
Director Robert Rodriguez has made no bones about this one being strictly for the kiddies.

By: MICHAEL C. WALSH | August 23, 2011

Review: Our Idiot Brother

Jesse Peretz's obnoxious comedy
Homeless and bounced from one sister's house to the next, will Ned and his simplicity serve as a touchstone of truth for these miserable women?

By: PETER KEOUGH | August 23, 2011

Review: Aurora

Deepening the mystery
Long after such an insight might do any good, Viorel, the mopey, truculent antihero of this second film in Cristi Puiu's "Six Stories from the Outskirts of Bucharest" observes that the justice system does not comprehend the complexity of his relationship to his wife.

By: PETER KEOUGH | August 23, 2011

Review: Don't be Afraid of the Dark

Don't call it a comeback
Katie Holmes plays Kim, a wannabe stepmom, in this lame remake of the 1973 Don't Be Afraid of the Dark .

By: ALEXANDRA CAVALLO | August 23, 2011

Review: Brighton Rock

Rowan Joffe's adaptation of Graham Greene's 1939 novel
For Graham Greene, the Catholic Church served more as a scourge than a comfort, but in Rowan Joffe's dreary, incoherent adaptation of Greene's 1939 novel, it merely offers an excuse to add choirs to the soundtrack.

By: PETER KEOUGH | August 23, 2011

Review: Chasing Madoff

Jeff Prosserman's documentary
Few will dispute the evil avarice behind the $50 billion Ponzi scheme Bernie Madoff masterminded.

By: TOM MEEK | August 23, 2011

Review: Griff the Invisible

Downtrodden superheroes
Like Kick-Ass and Super , Leon Ford's Griff the Invisible reaffirms the notion that superheroes exist to provide the meek and marginalized with an empowering fantasy.

By: PETER KEOUGH | August 23, 2011

Review: Conan the Barbarian

Blurry action scenes
Is Jason Momoa a future governor of California?

By: PETER KEOUGH | August 23, 2011

Review: Attack the Block

London crawling
As a group of teenage thugs approach their intended victim (only their eyes are visible as they glare at the trainee nurse who's walking the cold south London streets alone on the way home from her shift), you'll be forgiven if you recall the recent wave of rioting in the UK.

By: BRETT MICHEL | August 23, 2011