British, bookish period piece, from an Ian McEwan novel, about a young girl's misreading of the amorous activities of her elders, and its tragic consequences. (A mole on the right cheek links the three different actresses who play the role, Saoirse Ronan in the Thirties, Romola Garai in wartime, and …
The ripening of Miss Jane Austen, fictitiously re-imagined as a type of character in one of her own novels (minus the fairy-tale ending) and proportionately diminished as an artistic genius: a copyist more than a creator. The cast -- Anne Hathaway, James McAvoy, Julie Walters, James Cromwell, Maggie Smith, Lucy …
What does Robert Redford have to do to make you people understand how un-American the War on Terror really is? Does he have to plop you down into post-Civil War America? Will you make him hash out every possible parallel between the trial of Mary Surratt for her role in …
James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain star as an asshat and botched suicide, respectively, whose marriage fell apart with the death of their young son. Producer Harvey ‘Scissorhands’ Weinstein took first time writer-director Ned Benson’s dolorous trilogy — combined total running time of 311 minutes — and sliced them down to …
A Shakespearean herald reading the play’s old prologue is comically yanked at the beginning. So much for the literary roots, and despite mostly British accents, the wit leans to “Adios, loser,” “Let’s kick some grass,” and a “pansy” joke as garden gnomes fill out plastic remnants of the Romeo and …
The self-conferred title of Ugandan strongman, and madman, Idi Amin Dada, a facile role for Forest Whitaker, who pitches into it with gusto. The true central character, however, is a fictitious young Scottish doctor (James McAvoy), the President's personal physician, "closest advisor," illicit lover of Wife Number Three, and all-around …
Light sport made of a great figure, Tolstoy in his “eccentric” later years of anti-materialism, nonresistance, celibacy, vegetarianism, or, in short, Tolstoyanism. Under the starry eye of the author’s new secretary, a battle of wills, including a battle over the literal will, boils up between his leading disciple and his …
Driving in the heart of the Highlands, Edmond Murray receives a call from his ex-wife, in tears. Their seven-year-old son has gone missing from a campsite. Soon, it becomes clear that the child has been kidnapped, and the parents give way to despair. Directed by Christian Carion. With James McAvoy, …
Driving in the heart of the Highlands, Edmond Murray receives a call from his ex-wife, in tears. Their seven-year-old son has gone missing from a campsite. Soon, it becomes clear that the child has been kidnapped, and the parents give way to despair. Directed by Christian Carion. With James McAvoy, …
Contemporary fairy tale about an accursed heiress with a pig’s snout, a major impediment to her betrothal to a suitable blueblood, the understood formula for lifting the curse. The moral of the tale preaches self-acceptance, but a self-acceptance that brings about a complete and beauteous transformation (a most accommodating metaphor) …
When an American family is invited to spend the weekend at the idyllic country estate of a charming British family they befriended on vacation, what begins as a dream holiday soon warps into a snarled psychological nightmare. Written for the screen and directed by James Watkins, starring James McAvoy and …
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Dissociative Identity Disorder. Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan reminds everyone why folks used to associate him with Alfred Hitchcock, swiping a mental condition from Psycho, a sympathetic shrink from Spellbound, and a bold theorist from Rope. (Oh, and there’s some good …
Cheerily nostalgic college comedy, set in mid-Eighties England, built around an exceptionally endearing hero (James McAvoy), a Bristol University quiz kid thirsty for knowledge, torn in his affections between a Victoria's Secret-pretty blond Drama major and a J. Crew-pretty Jewish political activist. Choices, choices. Alice Eve, Rebecca Hall, Dominic Cooper, …
Screenwriter Max Landis transfigures the backstory of Mary Shelley’s almighty monster-maker into a set-bound action/adventure/horror/buddy comedy told from the POV of the cutest lil’ hunchback this side of Disney’s bell-ringer. Daniel Radcliffe plays the abscess-backed circus clown (possessed with a surgeon’s steady hand) plucked from under the big top by …