Chuan Lu’s epic about the 1937 Japanese conquest of Nanking, China, tries to do for that what Elem Klimov’s Come and See did for the Soviet-Nazi hell in Russia. In cold, ashen black-and-white, the panic, rapes, and atrocities pile up, along with some heroic Chinese resistance. Attempts to personalize this …
There is chat about Sherlock Holmes and vapors of Hitchcock, but Aaron Katz’s quirky mystery is mostly a hip, atmospheric slummer on the underside of wet, gray Portland, Oregon. The weather conspires with the shaggy plot to work up some soft, amiable tensions that will either tickle or bore you. …
A view of the effects of the economic crisis in a company gutted and “diversified” by a CEO turned bottom-line pig (Craig T. Nelson). Ben Affleck (rising sales exec), Chris Cooper (vulnerable workaholic), and Tommy Lee Jones (grizzled dreamer-doer) turn on the spit, yearning not just to survive but to …
A global plague quickly dispatches Gwyneth Paltrow, but Marion Cotillard and Kate Winslet carry on the fight as noble doctors. Lawrence Fishburne is the solemn voice of humane science, like Dennis Haysbert intoning for Allstate Insurance. Steven Soderbergh directed with brisk, methodical care for the big vista and small details, …
Ralph Fiennes, glowering like his Harry Potter villain Voldemort, is imposing and monotonous as Shakespeare’s fascistic, Roman hero Coriolanus, who lives for slaughter. Vanessa Redgrave dominates her every scene as his mother, a she-wolf of aristocratic pride who could have suckled Romulus and Remus. No milk could dilute the poisonous …
A dud. The big team of writers pile up cheap violence, icky aliens, corny rustics, a ha-ha Mexican, a mystery woman reborn in a fire, a hummingbird, a boy and his dog, silly special effects, and a sense that both the Western and the sci-fi invasion genre are being buried …
Slender, small-breasted women, mostly naked and elegantly shot, are seen performing at the famous Crazy Horse club in Paris, although they are more Degas-truthful offstage than in their chic, vampy routines. Tourists, couples, and solo voyeurs form the audience. Found touches of humor inflect the deadpan lucidity of veteran director …
A rending, talky documentary by Yoav Potash about Deborah Peagler, an L.A. black woman abused by the “dreamboat” husband who pimped her. Her effort to escape with her kids led to his death and won her an absurdly stretched sentence, though she was a model prisoner and suffered cancer. Pro …
Writer and director Whit Stillman (Metropolitan, Last Days of Disco) fumbles in his renewed quest to be our WASP Woody Allen. On a generic college campus, prim coeds at a suicide-prevention center exchange snippy witticisms and contend with fraternity boors. Attitude prevails, and the almost private gags (about men, depression, …
Freud may be out of fashion, but he shouldn’t be boring. Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and Jung (Michael Fassbender) and their patient who became a brainy disciple and colleague, Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), trade analytic ideas and furtive, sado-masochistic feelings. Knightley bravely uses her beauty, even jutting out her jaw a …
Two American businessmen (Emile Hirsch, Max Minghella) meet two nifty girls (Olivia Thirlby, Rachael Taylor) in a Moscow dance bar. Then the aliens arrive, looking like falling Christmas décor as they land but invisible as they track and kill. Chris Gorak’s generic film falls into clichés and isn’t very scary, …
Tim Burton’s tiresome tribute to the TV goth soaper, with Johnny Depp fully committed as the heavily made-up vampire Barnabas. Their devotion is real, but the film is a rummage of poor gags and plot fragments that add up to little. It has campy design touches, corny creep-outs, vivid women …
In Utah settings, Lawrence Kasdan directs other veterans — Diane Keaton, Kevin Kline, Dianne Wiest, Richard Jenkins, and Sam Shepard — plus a canine that seems their main interest, along with the problems of aging. Less an ’80s time capsule than a forgotten file, it mostly wanders around looking for …
A 2007 Israeli film inspired this fretful thriller about Israeli agents sent to Cold War East Berlin to abduct a notorious Nazi (acted with evil charisma by Jesper Christensen). Two acting teams play the flawed heroes (Sam Worthington, Marton Csokas, Jessica Chastain when young; Tom Wilkinson, Helen Mirren, Ciarán Hinds …