A single marriage stands in for a national tragedy. When director Yimou Zhang took on The Rape of Nanking in The Flowers of War, he proportioned the look and feel of his film to the event: florid, unrestrained, unsubtle as a bayonet to the crotch. Here, he's treating China's cultural …
Like a great many troubled American teenagers, prep-school outcast Jamie Schwartz (Alex Wolff) sees something of himself in Holden Caulfield, the troubled teen protagonist of J.D. Salinger’s landmark novel The Catcher in the Rye. Unlike many troubled American teenagers, he decides to do something about it. Not actually fixing his …
Director and co-writer Robert Kenner’s account of a narrowly avoided — through sheer good luck — nuclear missile disaster on U.S. soil in 1980. But while there is genuine tragedy and just frustration at the military’s behavior before, during, and after the crisis caused by a dropped wrench and a …
The opening may have you wondering if you’ve walked into the wrong theater as it presents the same household morning scenario again and again with minimal variation: is this some kind of arty drama about the perils of middle-class existence? Nah, it’s just director Jaume Collet-Serra playing around with a …
Have you ever wondered how it feels to be on your own? With no direction home? Like a complete unknown? Like a rolling stone? Well, you won’t get much satisfaction here, because even though titular mystery woman Alice (Rachel Weisz, stifled) is blessed with the (frankly implausible) ability to slip …
Home-style sci-fi about the rise of the nerds, and easily the best time you will have watching black and white video-quality footage on the big screen this year. Also, quite possibly the feel-icky movie of the summer. Computer Chess tells the story of an early-'80s computer chess convention in San …
Director Edward Berger’s adaptation of Robert Harris’ novel about the election of a new pope is shot and acted as a Serious Movie: all those muted reds and saturated blacks in those lingering shots of the Sistine Chapel ceiling overhead and the embattled Cardinals below, all that anguish and intellection …
What a difference acting makes. At the outset of this sequel to 2013’s surprise horror hit about a Catholic couple who do scout work for the Church to determine where supernatural intervention is required, wife Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) has a vision of a demon who has it in for …
There is ample photographic evidence that the '70s were not, in fact, the best-looking, coolest decade ever. But you wouldn't know it from watching The Connection, a "loosely based on reality" story about the infamous drug-smuggling operation known as The French Connection, set in — of all places — France. …
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 …
Gwyneth Paltrow goes country, playing a falling star with a failing marriage (to real-life country star Tim McGraw) and a dead baby on her conscience. There’s some genuine drama to be mined here, but the film is ultimately more interested in soulful youngster Garret Hedlund and his wham-bam-no-thank-you-ma’am relationship with …
Having taken on Being a Good Husband (and the importance of Jesus in such an endeavor) with Fireproof, the good people at Sherwood Pictures are quite naturally moving on to Being a Good Father (and the importance of Jesus, etc.). Law enforcement has taken the place of firefighting, for reasons …
What fun: a romantic comedy based on genuine human folly instead of some high-concept absurdity. Julianne Moore is a middle-aged woman adrift, so much so that she slips out of her marriage (to Steve Carell) and into another man's bed. Pathos ensues, with many of the laughs arising from moments …
The director (Ryan Coogler) and star (Michael B. Jordan, cut like an Abercrombie & Fitch model) of 2013’s Fruitvale Station re-team for a Rocky remake retooled for Generation Affirmation. Their first collaboration had a real-life tragedy to ground it. This one, unfortunately, has an increasingly fantastical franchise to give it …