In the first scene of The Iron Lady, 80-something Margaret Thatcher is presented as a little old lady unfit for the fast-moving world outside her hermetic London townhouse. The bulk of the movie takes place in an even smaller, more airless space: the dementia-stricken former British prime minister’s head. The…
A holy hot mess of the sacred and the inane, Joyful Noise, about a gospel choir in Pacashau, Georgia, is Jesus for Gleeks. Less Bible-thumping than, say, a Tyler Perry project, writer/director Todd Graff’s movie is still on an ecumenical outreach mission, its flatlining gags overshadowed by its focus on…
In Carnage posh pair Alan and Nancy (Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet) come to the home of wholesaler Michael (John C. Reilly) and crunchy author Penelope (Jodie Foster) to discuss how to deal with the fact that the former couple’s son hit the latter couple’s son in the face with…
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…
A Dangerous Method is something of an understatement. As cataclysmic as it is, this historically scrupulous science-fiction romance concerning the discovery of the unconscious mind might have been titled War of the Worlds or The Beast From 5000 Fathoms. The film is at once a lucid movie of ideas, a…
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is predicated on a pair of enigmatic personalities: a colorless bureaucratic master spook, George Smiley; and a double agent the Soviets have planted near the top of British intelligence whom Smiley must unmask. Although not without violence, the story is essentially a procedural in which, playing…
Having barely escaped a bungled attempt to cross lines during the Spanish Civil War, Spanish man-of-mystery Juan Pujol offered his services as a spy to the British at the dawn of WWII and was rejected. He ended up working for the Allies only after fully infiltrating himself with the Germans,…
We know — you’re excited about The Dark Knight Rises. And The Avengers. And The Hunger Games. So are we. We’re also excited about a lot of other movies whose marketing campaigns have not inundated us with white noise (yet). Allow us to suggest a few more films to put…
1. Margaret Margaret, written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan (You Can Count on Me), starring Anna Paquin with key supporting performances from Matt Damon and Mark Ruffalo, is a coming-of-age tale infused with post-9/11 anxiety. Margaret features Paquin — in the performance of the year — as Lisa, a Manhattan…
Kristen Wiig Six years of Saturday Night Live was threatening to calcify Kristen Wiig’s brand of highly physical yet conceptual comedy of awkwardness. Turns out she was working on a second act all along: As cowriter and star of the summer blockbuster Bridesmaids, Wiig proved, first and foremost, that female-fronted…
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a svelte remake of the 2009 Swedish blockbuster, a movie that opens with a bit of Led Zeppelin grandiosity (covered by Karen O) and a credit sequence of scary satanic rubber-fetish ickiness. Set in a freeze-your-blood land of streamlined chrome, steely dawns, and…
An undeniably charming homage to Hollywood in the late 1920s, The Artist will probably be the most successful silent movie since the days of the Gish sisters. It might also be the first silent film many of its viewers have ever seen. Although many of the technical aspects of the…
Frustratingly opaque, Australian novelist-turned-filmmaker Julia Leigh’s debut feature opens with an unforgettable image: A young woman, earning some extra cash as a medical-research subject, patiently sits as a long tube is threaded down her esophagus. Sharp and precise as its tableau might be, though, Sleeping Beauty never burrows into the…
War Horse finds the silver lining of individual salvation in one of modern history’s darkest thunderclouds: World War I. As the English lad Albert (Jeremy Irvine) bonds with the beloved, half-thoroughbred steed he has named Joey and, once the horse is conscripted by the British army, follows him onto Flanders…
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…
An arrogant, struggling actor leaves his wife for a sexy, unstable younger woman, which would be a perfectly serviceable starting point for Ibsen or Woody Allen. Yet in adapting her recent play The Scene, Theresa Rebeck can’t find a consistent tone for her material or players. Charlie (Stephen Barker Turner)…
Six years off from feature filmmaking, Cameron Crowe returns with a film he did not write, but one he rewrote, based on the real-life story of Benjamin Mee, a Brit newspaper columnist who picked up from his idyllic new digs in the South of France and went off to rescue…
Steve McQueen’s first two films both star Michael Fassbender, feature virtually interchangeable titles, and are nearly as grueling to watch as they must have been to make. But where Shame might be nearly as excruciating as 2008’s Hunger, it’s a lot less exalted. In Shame, Fassbender’s 30-something Manhattan office drone…
Riffing on how outlaw Butch Cassidy’s life might have gone had he survived in South America, this modest oater should tickle Western fans. (I assume there are a few of us left.) Blackthorn finds Cassidy (Sam Shepard) still in Bolivia, breeding horses, bedding his Indian housekeeper (Magaly Solier), and making…
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…
Described as a “psychotic prom-queen bitch,” the anti-heroine of Young Adult, directed by Jason Reitman from a Diablo Cody screenplay, is a prize part for Charlize Theron. She plays Mavis, a 37-year-old writer of high school romance fiction, as well as a divorcée, an alcoholic, and a slovenly, spiteful, self-absorbed…
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:…
