Not so much a movie about boxing as a movie about fighting, about the act of conflict. Mark Wahlberg plays Micky Ward, the real-life road worker from Lowell, Massachusetts, who recharged his sputtering boxing career to win the WBU Light Welterweight Championship in 2000. Amy Adams stars as his supportive …
Filmmakers follow the lives of several aspiring ballet dancers from around the globe (ages 9 to 19) as they train for the Youth America Grand Prix, a prestigious dance competition in New York City that holds the potential for career stardom. The dancers offer some humanity to the generic storytelling. …
The title tells it all. The film involves a group of 30-something, mid-level professionals who have been friends since high school and throw epic parties every summer at a beach house in the Hamptons. When the estate goes up for sale, the group is determined to throw the wildest party …
Eva is a dreamer in a world of assimilated perspectives. Her workday consists of sewing in a factory, but her ambition is to become a famous fashion designer. Enter Jorge, a well-to-do charmer whose world-weary aesthetic provides Eva with just the escape she needs. Unfortunately, the performances do not live …
A “What does it all mean?” meditation on life and love centered on an assortment of 20-something, somehow professionals adrift in a sea of somewhat maturity. The principal character is a fashionably scraggly freelance writer who taps into his dormant Good Samaritan upon taking in an elementary-age stowaway he finds …
Grim morality tale with affectations of social commentary on gang culture, nihilistic philosophy, even evil itself. The screen is awash in stale grays and greasy olive tones. The film does have its visceral touches: The authentic realization of London neighborhood hellholes, the hero’s phoenix-like emergence from a cocoon of flayed …
The first 15 minutes are a rough patch, and the withered image doesn’t help — everything looks dusty and anemic. Once we’re acclimated, we realize how appropriate the look is, how it emphasizes the dreary circumstances of the players. There’s a grade-school intellectual with ambitions of making a film about …
Danfung Dennis’s startling documentary follows U.S. Marine Sgt. Nathan Harris through his recovery after being shot in the hip while serving his third tour in Afghanistan. We are privy to the actual footage from the battlefield leading up to Harris’s injury. The camera is remarkably steady, given the roughness of …
The film is an opportunity to see familiar faces in unfamiliar roles, most notably Natalie Portman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The story centers around TJ (played with vulnerable conviction by Devin Brochu), a diminutive high schooler struggling with the death of his mother. His grief management takes a drastic turn with …
Effective spookiness from director James (Saw) Wan, proving he is quite capable without the torture devices. The movie is all old school: haunted-house premise, practical make-up effects, a palpable absence of digital flourishes. The plot is simple enough: a relatively happy family begins to experience the typical bumps in the …
Disney reaches back to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom series for its most recent adventure saga. The fuzzy 3-D is a nuisance, but the artwork is competent and the interaction of live actors and digital images is nearly seamless. Taylor Kitsch plays Carter, a disgruntled war hero from Virginia (circa mid-1800s) …
The gospel offspring of Sister Act and Burlesque, involving a choir rivalry between the church’s two top vocalists (Dolly Parton and Queen Latifah). Parton’s charm is masked by her cosmetic work — she has one expression, no matter the emotion. Latifah’s maternal dignity is the film’s saving grace, but the …
After the gravitas of Mysterious Skin, Greg Araki is content to fumble about for cardboard-cutout cult status. Filmed in colors so vibrant that every shot waves like a rainbow flag, the story involves some senseless to-do about “complex” sexuality, global annihilation, and the hostile takeover of a black-robed cult. The …
Tom Hanks cowrote, directed, and stars in this novel pleasantry about a 50-something, all-too-amiable employee of the month. Hanks’s title character is fired at the film’s outset for his lack of education, prompting him to enroll in community college. Enter Julia Roberts as a frustrated speech professor in the midst …
Big-budget remake of the 1994 Jet Li film Fist of Legend, which was itself a remake of the 1972 Bruce Lee film Fist of Fury. Beneath all the fists and feet, the story is nothing more than a piece of idealized nationalism. Donnie Yen (donning a Kato costume) plays the …