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Film Review

An American Vampire in Washington

by Ann Morrow June 27, 2012

“We are all slaves to something,” says an evildoer in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Honest Abe (Benjamin Walker) is not deterred by this platitude in his mission to rid America of its conspiracy of bloodsuckers—whether political ...

Blowing Smoke

by Laura Leon June 20, 2012

One day this past weekend, my family went to a restaurant whose interior could well have been the design brainchild of the Grateful Dead, coming off their most powerful ’shrooms, and Stevie Nicks, OD-ing on ...

No Sex Please, We’re British

by Shawn Stone June 20, 2012

In Hysteria, a Victorian period piece about medical misogyny, three walking clichés brought to life by Hugh Dancy, Felicity Jones and Maggie Gyllenhaal interact entertainingly enough for an hour and a half’s amusement. Dancy plays ...

Jukebox Zero

by Ann Morrow June 20, 2012

Rock of Ages, the Tony-nominated musical, is a saccharine valentine to big dumb loud rock music. Rock of Ages, the movie adapted from the Broadway musical, is the unintentional death knell to that music—known at ...

Lovely and Horrible

by Shawn Stone June 14, 2012

On an examination table in an antiseptic environment, a pair of scientists poke and prod at the well-preserved head of a humanoid alien. “I think,” one woman says to the other, “we can trick [the brain] ...

Too Man Queens

by Ann Morrow June 14, 2012

Who, or what, is the mirror man? That’s just one of the questions to ponder during the downtime in Snow White and the Huntsman, an update of the Grimm’s fairy tale that owes more to ...

Time-Travel Transformation

by Laura Leon May 30, 2012

A few weeks ago, during one of those bouts of sleeplessness where you mull over troubling work and family situations ad nauseum, I thought about Will Smith. Why, I’ll never know, but in my nocturnal ...

Good Grief

by Shawn Stone May 30, 2012

Monsieur Lazhar, the recent Quebeçois Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film (it lost to A Separation) is a quiet, occasionally droll and ultimately moving exploration of how we react, officially and personally, to tragedy. ...

Il Doofy

by John Rodat May 24, 2012

I found the latest Sacha Baron Cohen comedy, The Dictator, tedious and predictable; though I’m not really a fan of Cohen’s work, I am surprised to have to use those adjectives. Cohen’s appeal is largely ...

Passages To India

by Ann Morrow May 24, 2012

Most movies start with a concept, but rarely from a concept that could be found in real life. Yet The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is such a movie: Adapted from These Foolish Things, a novel ...

Gentle Enough for Baby

by Laura Leon May 24, 2012

The enormous success of What to Expect When You’re Expecting and its, er, literary offspring was in large part due to the timing of its debut, which paralleled the beginning of mommy-baby chic. Not only ...

Long In the Fangs

by Ann Morrow May 16, 2012

Long before there was True Blood, or Twilight, or even The Vampire Lestat, there was Barnabas Collins—the first of the sympathetic mainstream vampires, a bloodsucker with a flair for human-style melodrama and a devotion to ...

The Gang’s All Here

by Shawn Stone May 10, 2012

This flick is pretty darn good. Millions have seen it. If you’re going to the movies this weekend, it’s statistically likely you’ll buy a ticket for The Avengers. Why not let’s give it three and ...

Twits

by Laura Leon May 10, 2012

Judging from the popularity of Michelle Obama’s J Crew cardigans, ballet shoes and dirndl skirts, “prep,” as style and visual conceit, might have made a minor comeback in the last few years. But it’s a ...

Punchy

by Shawn Stone May 2, 2012

When is the fighting going to start? That’s the question that pops into one’s head when settling in to watch a Jason Statham movie. Statham is the preeminent action star of our day, with a cinematic ...

Dumb Love

by Laura Leon May 2, 2012

The Five Year Engagement starts out cute—in fact, really cute, although not in a way that makes you cringe (that comes later). Tom (Jason Segal) proposes to Violet (Emily Blunt) on a romantic San Fran ...

Hack Work

by Ann Morrow May 2, 2012

A tale more grotesque than arabesque, The Raven replaces Edgar Allan Poe’s “opulent imagination” with a standard-issue horror story. Though it stars Poe himself (John Cusack), the plot is merely an excuse to fill in ...

Real People

by Shawn Stone April 26, 2012

If action is character, then young Cyril (Thomas Doret) can’t run away from himself fast enough. The titular “kid with a bike” in the Dardenne brothers’ latest chamber drama is angry and hurt for good ...

Game Changer

by Laura Leon April 26, 2012

A few years ago, comedian Steve Harvey came out with a book called Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man, which outlined a new—or rather, an old—playbook for women to follow if they wanted ...

Out of the Ruins

by Shawn Stone April 18, 2012

The title of Terence Davies’ soulful film based on Terence Rattigan’s play has nothing to do with the ocean. It refers to the idiom (and Tin Pan Alley standard) in which someone laments being caught ...

A Kick in the Head

by Laura Leon April 18, 2012

When I was a little girl, watching the Three Stooges, like The Andy Griffith Show, seemed completely a guy thing. Truly, other than my mother, I didn’t know any females who regularly watched, or enjoyed, ...

The Human Dimension

by Laura Leon April 11, 2012

The transformation of the 1997 sensation, Titanic, into 3D may seem like a mere gimmick, designed to propel millions of kids who never saw the original back to the multiplex for a first gander. OK, ...

A Royal Pain

by Ann Morrow April 11, 2012

The Material Girl directs a movie about material culture in W.E., Madonna’s utterly meaningless biopic about “the romance of the century” between Wallis Simpson, an American social climber, and Edward, Prince of Wales, who abdicated ...

Wish Fulfillment

by Laura Leon April 4, 2012

Fairy tales are everywhere these days, and I couldn’t be happier ever after. The tremendous TV shows Once Upon a Time and Grimm, and the debut of Tarsem Singh’s take on Snow White, Mirror Mirror, ...

Mythmash

by Ann Morrow April 4, 2012

The gods of Olympus are a bunch of Tinkerbells. Or so it seems in Wrath of the Titans, a frenetic, imbecilic action movie that just happens to involve Zeus and his extended family of deities. ...

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