Hostilities in This Means War are declared as two work mates compete for the affection of the same woman. The contested objective is Lauren (Reese Witherspoon), a product tester who decides to apply comparative shopping techniques to dating. Her would-be beaus, FDR (Chris Pine) and Tuck (Tom Hardy), are best…
The Vow, a full-bodied lunge for the heartstrings, has a humdinger of a premise, forcing its characters to face a question that most of us ask ourselves: If you could do the last five years over again, would you live them the same, or take a mulligan? A young, married…
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close not only has serious lit pedigree, based as it is on the sophomore novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, but also two global-historical tragedies to play with. Ten-year old Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn) has lost his father (Tom Hanks), who was on the 105th floor of…
Will there someday be a movie where the “one last job” goes off without a hitch? Not Contraband, anyway, which begins with that time-tested premise, then subjects its protagonist to a feature-length demonstration of Murphy’s Law. Chris Farraday (Mark Wahlberg) is the retiree runner reluctantly reactivated, a legend who once…
The Adventures of Tintin rolls together plot elements from three comic-book adventures starring Tintin, first introduced in 1929 and one of the all-time most iconographic characters in comic art. After stumbling across a mysterious clue in a model ship, Tintin (voiced by Jamie Bell) bands together with the brawling, bibulous…
For 15 years and now four sequels, Tom Cruise has pilgrimaged regularly to the Mission: Impossible franchise. Like a Hindu’s rejuvenating bath in the Ganges, a dip in the series serves to wash away perceived doubts about the star’s enduring fame and clout. The sustained box office of the Mission:…
Although supplying boy’s adventure thrills on the side, the original Sherlock Holmes stories are remarkable for how they make the process of empirical brainwork and the resulting discoveries breathlessly exciting. Each Holmes tale simultaneously unlocks a mystery while deepening the enigma of its hero in a miraculously sustained piece of…
One of the biggest names in Formula 1 racing, Ayrton Senna was 34 years old when a well-placed blow from a suspension shaft ended his life on Tamburello curve at the San Marino Grand Prix in Imola, Italy. Asif Kapadia’s expertly orchestrated documentary/biography condenses the breakneck decade leading up to…
The animated, 3-D Arthur Christmas introduces three generations of St. Nick’s family: Weedy retired Grandsanta (voiced by Bill Nighy, hogging the good lines), the obliviously ineffectual Santa Claus (Jim Broadbent), and his two sons, the North Pole’s ultracompetent control-room manager and Santa’s expected successor, Steve (Hugh Laurie), and his brother,…
Mumble, the hoofing emperor penguin from the first Happy Feet (voiced again by Elijah Wood), now struggles to make a fatherly impression on his own chick, Erik, who has instead found his role model in a mysterious beaked penguin, Sven (Hank Azaria, doing burlesque Swede), who has become a messianic…
A revenge of the have-nots playing on the clear class stratification of the luxury high-rise, Tower Heist pits lobby against penthouse. Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller) is the manager of the Tower, an exclusive apartment building on Columbus Circle (the Trump International, in fact). Josh’s job is to know every peccadillo…
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, is the close-second candidate to be attributed authorship of the 37 plays of William Shakespeare — who, due to the troublesome existence of evidence, remains the general favorite. De Vere, played as a figure of regal isolation by Rhys Ifans, is the protagonist…
Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) is a two-bit trainer traveling the state fair circuit in a not-too-distant future. His line is robot fighting, a sport that has absorbed the audience for boxing, MMA, and, apparently, demolition derby. After a tough match leaves Charlie ‘botless, he gets news that his ex-girlfriend, with…
Wholly unrelated to the 1975 Sam Peckinpah film of the same name, Killer Elite is distinguished by one no-mercy, eye-gouging, testicle-punching brawl and one whoppingly indifferent screenplay. After a collateral-damage close call awakens his conscience — the first of many perfunctorily recycled bits to come — hit man Danny Bryce…
You know those Affliction shirts, covered in skulls, gothic lettering, and tribal patterns, all cacophonous symbols of badass machismo? That’s what the mixed martial arts tie-in movie Warrior is — an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink fire sale of male-weepie tropes, awesome in its thoroughness. The collective dream of authentic blue-collar American grubbiness lives…
The Guard is a shaggy-man character study, its subject a 50-something policeman in West Ireland, Sgt. Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson). No by-the-book cop, Boyle spends his days off romping with hookers and has no qualms about gulping MDMA from the pockets of a freshly dead teenager — he also displays…
Including glimpses of Sleeping Beauty in her glass coffin, the rings of Saturn, and a roadside Texas BBQ, Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life bears a variety of forms — and invites as many reactions. You may feel amazed or muddled, softly spoken to or simply abandoned while watching it;…
Including glimpses of Sleeping Beauty in her glass coffin, the rings of Saturn, and a roadside Texas BBQ, Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life bears a variety of forms — and invites as many reactions. You may feel amazed or muddled, softly spoken to or simply abandoned while watching it;…
The finest Western you’ll see this year is set in aristocratic 16th-century France, in the heat of Counter-Reformation. Mélanie Thierry’s father barters her for the titular title, marrying her off to Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet’s shy, pained prince — instead of her heart’s first choice, Gaspard Ulliel’s Duke de Guise. De Guise…
Eight-millimeter home movies and statist hymns from the Soviet past haunt Robin Hessman’s documentary of a contemporary Russia pocked with international logos in which five Muscovites recall their lives and, in the process, 40 years of national history. A married couple, teachers Borya and Lyuba Meyerson, testify for the camera…
A rare breed of mood movie, 3 Backyards crossfades through three stories, each begun in an unidentified Long Island suburb. The protagonists are an anxious housewife, Peggy (Edie Falco); a man burdened by vague marital and financial worry, John (Elias Koteas); and an in-her-own-world 9-year-old, Christina (Rachel Resheff). In the…
Sam (Michael Angarano), a young kids’-book author, suckers his neglected childhood best friend, Marshall (Reece Thompson), into driving them out of Brooklyn. Romantic egotist Sam’s hidden ulterior motive behind their impromptu vacation is to ambush old flame Zoe (Uma Thurman) at her fiancé’s posh shore house — where he unexpectedly…
