A generic story about two brothers on opposite sides of an elimination-style mixed martial arts competition. What makes Warrior interesting is that all the machismo is used to generate a theme: forgiveness. The arena for this is the tableau of family ruin between the two brothers and their ex-alcoholic, ex-abusive …
Hal Holbrook doesn’t quite steal the show as the old-man-remembering version of pretty Robert Pattinson in this love story set in the days when a traveling circus was still enough to inspire wonder. No, the real thief is Christoph Waltz, who gives a monster performance as the circus owner, ringleader, …
Madonna’s gilded, google-eyed take on how American divorcée Wallis Simpson became the Duchess of Windsor after her “great love” for Britain’s Edward VIII led to his 1937 abdication. E. (James D’Arcy) is all heart and no brain, while W. (very sharp Andrea Riseborough) is a chic, catty grabber. Taffy-headed director/writer …
Ben Mee (Matt Damon) leaves print journalism to buy and run a small zoo. Scarlett Johansson, looking safari bronzed, is the main animal keeper. The critters are delightful, and the winsome cast includes infallibly funny Thomas Haden Church, delightful teen Elle Fanning, and adorable mascot Maggie Elizabeth Jones. Drawn from …
One of writer-director Andrew Haigh’s characters bemoans the fact that his upcoming art exhibition will be a “gays only” affair. (“Straights won’t come, because it has nothing to do with their world.”) Instead of following his own advice and offering up a shared experience, Haigh delivers yet another standard-issue gay …
The well-digger is French star Daniel Auteuil (who, besides starring, also adapted the Marcel Pagnol novel and directed), and he has, in fact, five daughters. But the focus here is Patricia (Astrid Berges-Frisbey), an angelic eldest sister who rivals the surrounding South of France for natural beauty. But when the …
Rending, harrowing, moving. This documentary by David Weissman and Bill Weber uses recent interviews and vintage photos and clips to fathom the AIDS epidemic, which nearly cratered the San Francisco gay community in the ’80s. There are five main survivor-witnesses, including an artist whose aged face is the spiritual map …
As Ally Darling, who calls herself “a jobless whore who slept with 20 men,” Anna Faris is a doll of chipmunky charm, with the cutest vocal scratch since June Allyson. She’s the fun zip in this bubble-headed comedy in which she trawls those 20 to find Mr. Right, slowly realizing …
The contemporary hook for this fable is the setting: a Lebanese village where the Christians and Muslims have crafted a fragile peace built on isolation from the conflicts raging “elsewhere.” But of course, “elsewhere” finds its way in, and we discover that the fable is about something more fundamental than …
Soldiers come from places such as Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and parents such as the Smiths and Fredianellis. One day they’re kids doing cannonballs off a pier, the next they’re commanding tank cannons in Afghanistan. For four years, and at great personal risk, director Heather Courtney and her crew followed a …
Rachel Weisz is again the credible center of a movie not likely to find a wide audience (a plex-packer this isn’t). In Larysa Kondracki’s urgent film, Weisz plays a U.N. peace force recruit who brings direct, Nebraskan integrity to a rotten situation in Bosnia. Many of her new comrades sell …
They booze in 1975 Brooklyn. It’s as if director John Gray popped Scorsese’s Mean Streets (1973) as instant corn. Other generic sources are writers Arthur Miller and James T. Farrell, and tons of TV. Nick Thurston is a gentle, aspiring artist whose dumb brother (Geoffrey Wigdor) is a criminal hothead. …