Admittedly, yours truly is not the most informed critical voice to heed when it comes to assessing stodgy British costume dramas. (I tend to side with Francois Truffaut, who once referred to "British cinema" as an oxymoron.) Still, soon after the bits of choreographed slapstick at the film's opening, it …
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 …
It would be hard to top Fred Schepisi's Roxanne as the #1 film adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s nasally enhanced romance, but the latest from Joe Wright (Atonement, The Soloist) comes close. Time and again Peter Dinklage has proven to be more than just another Billy Barty, a character actor accepting …
A cup of weak tea indeed from director Joe Wright, one that sorely needs a shot of something stronger to brace it for the unenviable task of manufacturing drama out of the question of whether Prime Minister Winston Churchill will take Britain into war with Germany or sit down for …
You know there’s trouble ahead when the pixels begin outnumbering the pixies. For the first 30 minutes of Joe Wright's (Anna Karenina) prequel to the J. M. Barrie classic, we follow Peter (Levi Miller) as he progresses from orphanage doorstep to flying pirate ship. Peter’s inevitable arrival at Neverland is …
By this time the Jane Austen novel qualifies as a repertory piece, a mettle-test for would-be Darcys and Elizabeth Bennets, little different from Romeo and Juliet. The team behind the present production of it, apart from their attempt to replace the titular conjunction with a dashing ampersand, earn no points …
A Los Angeles Times columnist (Steve Lopez by byline) finding a story in a homeless schizophrenic classical musician, and making something of it, is quite different from a team of filmmakers finding the same story predigested. What they chiefly make of it is a couple of outsized performances by Robert …