When we first see bi computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, the final adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium” trilogy, she is being transported to a hospital in Gothenburg, bloodied almost beyond recognition, the result of a bullet put in her brain by…

Beyond fans of Mélanie Laurent—who furiously fingers a fiddle and wears flashback wigs—The Concert may appeal to those who delight in stereotypes (Jews like money!). Andrei Filipov (Aleksei Guskov) pushes a broom at the Bolshoi, where he lost his status as star conductor 30 years ago under Brezhnev for refusing…

After Fox Searchlight’s Amelia spectacularly flamed out last October, the studio tries again to grab awards-season honors with another biopic starring and executive-produced by Hilary Swank. As Conviction’s Betty Anne Waters, a Massachusetts high school dropout and single mom who put herself through law school to exonerate her brother, Kenny,…

For the past half-decade, Romain Duris has been French cinema’s go-to brooder. Diversifying his saturnine handsomeness, Duris gives his artfully disheveled brunet mop and permanent three-day stubble a workout in the overextended, hopped-up Heartbreaker, which puts the “antic” in romantic comedy. The premise of Heartbreaker, the first feature by TV…

Davis Guggenheim’s call-to-arms documentary on the failures of the U.S. public-education system — thoroughly laudable in intention if maddening in its logic and omissions — originated with his own guilty conscience. An Academy Award winner for 2006’s An Inconvenient Truth, the director, whose debut doc, 2001’s The First Year, heralded…

As far as teen comedies informed by tenth-grade English syllabi go, Easy A, partly inspired by The Scarlet Letter, is remedial ed compared with Clueless and 10 Things I Hate About You. High-schooler Olive (Emma Stone, confirming the talent shown in supporting roles in Superbad and The House Bunny) convinces…

Pat Tillman, the Arizona Cardinals safety who enlisted in the Army Rangers eight months after September 11, read Emerson, Chomsky, and, though an atheist, the Bible. Resembling a beefier Seann William Scott, he shunned cell phones, cars, and professional-athlete megalomania. A fiercely private (and principled) person, his death in Afghanistan…

Delicate, gangly Louis Ives (Paul Dano) yearns to be both a Gatsby-era gentleman and a pretty young lady. Caught fondling a lacy brassiere, he’s dismissed from his teaching post at a Princeton prep school and heads to New York with writerly aspirations, sharing an East 91st Street apartment with Henry…

Beyond fans of Mélanie Laurent — who furiously fingers a fiddle and wears flashback wigs — The Concert may appeal to those who delight in stereotypes (Jews like money!). Andrei Filipov (Aleksei Guskov) pushes a broom at the Bolshoi, where he lost his status as star conductor 30 years ago…

Watered-down Jungian analysis meets a GLAAD-approved weepie in Peter Bratt’s second feature, starring brother Benjamin (who also produces) as a neck-tattooed macho who will finally realize the damage his rock-hard masculinity has caused during a funeral for a teenaged gangbanger, his tears mixing with the rain. As subtle as a…

As unrepentantly grandiose and ludicrous as its title, Luca Guadagnino’s visually ravishing third feature suggests an epic that Visconti and Sirk might have made after they finished watching Vertigo and reading Madame Bovary while gorging themselves on aphrodisiacs. That it works so well — despite frequently risible dialogue (“Happy is…

Directors Brian Koppelman and David Levien, frequent writing partners who scripted Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience, have here created The Michael Douglas Experience; whether you respond to the material depends largely on how much you enjoy the actor lazily riffing on the oily creatures of his past. After a prologue…

In his work as writer/director, Rodrigo García has admirably distinguished himself through his commitment to creating intelligent, complex roles for his heavily distaff casts. Like his debut, Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her (2000), and Nine Lives (2005), Mother and Child is a compassionate, multi-threaded tale about…

Another movie, not as awful or deluded as this one, might one day find better use for the easygoing vibe between Queen Latifah and Common, the stars of Just Wright, a romantic comedy (for the ladies) with basketball and cameoing NBA players in it (for the fellas). That absolutely no…

I’m no obstetrician, but I’d wager that Jennifer Lopez’s own labor when birthing fraternal twins two years ago was much less interminable and painful than watching this romantic comedy, the star’s first movie since 2006’s El Cantante, about knocking yourself up. As single, financially comfortable, baby-craving Tribeca pet-store owner Zoe,…

It doesn’t take much to improve the first Death at a Funeral, the flat Frank Oz–directed Britcom of 2007; a few tossed-off references to Jet and sickle cell anemia will do it. Though the plot of Dean Craig’s original script remains almost entirely intact (he receives the sole writer’s credit),…

A fixture of New York City’s no-wave scene of the late ’70s and early ’80s — an era of prolific DIY filmmaking, when everybody seemed to be collaborating with everyone else — Bette Gordon continues her exploration of desire with Handsome Harry. A road-movie ensemble piece interrupted by Fireworks-like flashbacks,…

Tyler Perry follows up his best film, 2007’s Why Did I Get Married?, with his worst. This time, the four couples in various states of marital discord vacation not in Colorado but in the Bahamas — mainly so that Michael Jai White’s Marcus can remain shirtless — before resuming their…

Assault by relentless accordion-playing, Paris 36 proves that sometimes, imitation is the highest form of flatulence. Christophe Barratier follows up his equally pandering The Chorus (2004) with an aggressively nostalgic, tinny homage to French musicals of the ’30s and ’40s. To distract viewers from the film’s shallowness and the fact…

Continuing both his bad filmmaking and obsession with lethal orifices, Mitchell Lichtenstein follows up Teeth, his clumsy debut about a dismembering vagina, with a voluminous explosion of poop. The brown-out is produced by Joe (Rip Torn), a dementia-addled horndog whose two daughters, environmentalist Laura (Demi Moore) and married-into-money Jayne (Parker…

The bar for romantic comedies has been set so low that when one — especially one whose press materials boast “from the studio that brought you The Proposal” — doesn’t leave you with the feeling that you’ve witnessed onscreen gynocide, consider it a small victory. When in Rome is confused…

Endgame, about the covert negotiations in the ’80s that helped bring down apartheid, follows Michael Young (Jonny Lee Miller), a public affairs director for a British gold-mining firm. Miller secretly assembles talks between African National Congress representatives led by Thabo Mbeki (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and powerful Afrikaners like philosophy prof Will…