“Based on a true story” is an overused and much-abused claim, now used to gussy up everything from supernatural thrillers to backstage comedies. Belle at least has the added distinction of being based on a …

Richard Montoya was born in San Diego, the son of Korean War veteran Jose Montoya, a poet, and one of the founders of the Royal Chicano Art Front (later named the Royal Chicano Air Force). …

Fading Gigolo tells the story of Fioravante (John Turturro), a self-assured florist who gets recruited by his older friend Murray (Woody Allen) to work as, of all things, a gigolo. Fioravante isn’t overly thrilled with …

Okay, my bad. Dom Hemingway came out last Friday, and I’m just getting to this now. Inexcusable. Still, I believe Dom would understand — he knows about time slipping away. And anyway, it’s still in …

Only Lovers Left Alive is less a movie than an extended, deadpan, highly stylized rant from director Jim Jarmusch. Adam (Tom Hiddleston) is a vampire. Adam listens to vinyl, collects vintage electric guitars, and makes …

Dom Hemingway opens with an extended (snicker) shot of a bare-chested and beefy Jude Law delivering an equally extended (snicker) panegyric on his penis. An encomium for his erection. A tribute to his tallywacker. On …

Nick Frost — perhaps best known as the Oliver Hardy to Simon Pegg’s Stan Laurel in the Cornetto trilogy (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, The World’s End) — salsas into the spotlight in the …

In Divergent (opening this week), Shailene Woodley plays Tris, a young woman living in a post-war dystopian city that has been divided into five factions: Erudite, Dauntless, Abnegation, Amity, and Candor. At 16, all children …

It's an odd thing to hear an it-is-ya-know Irish accent filtered through Minnesota real-good-then. Almost as odd, perhaps, as encountering an Irish whiskey named after a couple of redheaded women, dreamed up in a Minneapolis …

I liked The Grand Budapest Hotel better than my co-critic Mr. Marks. Even so, it takes only the merest whit of imagination and effort to set the film’s alpine chase sequence to the melodic strains …

On the left, a promo photo from 2012’s Spring Breakers. On the right, the cover of the 2014 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Good artists borrow; great artists get the girls to go topless.

It’s possible to accuse Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel of verging into self-parody. But I think Anderson is too self-conscious for that. And if you squint just so, you may be able to see …

Concentrate only on the fantastic, menacing set design. Or, you know, Eva Green's bosom.

Don Argott's documentary As the Palaces Burn tells two interconnected stories, but it started out to tell just one. The idea was to travel with the metal band Lamb of God on the world tour …

Near the end of Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago — Lydia Smith’s finely observed documentary about travelers along Spain’s 500-mile pilgrim trail, the Camino de Santiago — one of the pilgrims makes a …

So The Spectacular Now is on YouTube. You can rent it for $4.99! Or you can watch it for free right here, in full Blu-ray resolution, because the Internet. Below, you can have a look …

Just in time for your post-Valentine’s low, In Secret serves up a murky bowl of curdled desire, soured by a generous dollop of good old-fashioned guilt. No, wait — come back! It’s good, honest! It’s …

Dying human put into machine, with attendant complications? Robocop. Intelligent consciousness in a machine, with attendant complications? Her. Dying human's intelligent consciousness put into a machine, with attendant complications? Transcendence. Here's a trailer.

Short answer: no, of course not. Apple doesn't manufacture weapons systems. But we have to think about SEO, you know? Because of Google. Which Omnicorp isn't, either. Longer answer: Hilariously, sort of, maybe! Or at …

Brian got married “around age 28. We had Anthony about two years afterwards and had Adriana in ’94.” Though he didn’t relish the thought of being “50 years old and worrying about [my daughter’s] virginity,” …

Y'all have seen All About Eve, right? [Um, if you haven't, spoilers ahead.] It's a classic backstage story of a fame-hungry woman who decides that her best bet is to learn how to act. But …

Of course, the real tragedy is the addiction and death. But there is also this: Hoffman could have been truly amazing in that great will-o-the-wisp of films, the adaptation of John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy …

So over at Vanity Fair, there's a story about how Jennifer Lawrence's fondness for Doritos on the set of American Hustle resulted in some...wardrobe difficulties. Particularly when it came to this big lady-kiss scene in …

Another Oscar season, another opportunity to wonder aloud why it is that, in this age of supposedly dwindling attention spans, there has not been an explosion of interest in the short-film form. Tired of formulaic …

In 2009, filmmaker Ron Krauss (Puppies for Sale, Alien Hunter) paid a visit to his brother in New Jersey. While there, he learned about a shelter for young mothers, just a mile away. He decided …

Everybody is oohing and aahing over this bit from Fight Club where Tyler Durden has been digitally edited out. Well and good. But when are they going to edit the rabbit into Harvey?

Deeper and deeper we go into the cinematic void that is January. The stygian emptiness is so encompassing by now that we must ask ourselves pointless, unanswerable questions just to keep going. So: will 2014 …

The Legend of Hercules is the first of this year's two Hercules films. The second, due in July, will star Dwayne Johnson, a suitably gigantic actor for the part of the original strongman. But Kellan …

At first glance, you might be tempted to think that Spike Jonze’s latest film is titled Her because it’s about her: Samantha, the sentient operating system (fetchingly voiced by Scarlett Johansson), who is purchased, befriended, …

So, over at Mr. Marks' Wolf of Wall Street review, the conversation has turned, as it does, to "Whatever happened to Robert De Niro?" For the longest time, my answer to that question has been, …

There has been some hubbub about director Peter Jackson's decision to inject "feminine energy" into his Hobbit adaptation through the inclusion of Tauriel, a lady elf. I thought it a lame decision in a movie …

It’s hard out there for a film critic. It’s especially hard right now — January. People say, “Happy New Year.” People think of new beginnings and better times. A chance to slough off the encrusted …

I’m not sure American Hustle is the best picture of the year. I’m not even sure if it’s my favorite picture of the year. But I’m pretty sure it brought me more oh-hell-yes pleasure than …

The hobbit in The Hobbit may get the title, but it's pretty clear by now that the real star of Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy is the dragon Smaug. This isn't exactly surprising; Jackson's roots are …

My favorite moment in The Desolation of Smaug, part two of Peter Jackson’s epic expansion of J.R.R. Tolkien’s children’s book The Hobbit, came when the titular hobbit and his thirteen dwarvish companions were buried under …

I mean, why else would Disney buy the aging Indiana Jones franchise unless Indy was close to discovering the truth?!?

I overheard a fellow critic at a screening recently saying what a terrible year it had been for movies. His conversational fellows seemed to agree. I haven't been playing the critical game long enough to …

Spoilers ahead, folks. I need to see Gravity again before I can really go after my co-critic for his dismissal of a film that actually manages to dramatize the Christian notion of being “born again” …

"Oh, my God," said my friend, staring at her smartphone. "Paul Walker died in a fiery crash." For a split-second, it registered as maybe a joke. Paul Walker? The star of the Fast & Furious …

Spike Lee’s remake of Chan-wook Park’s celebrated tale of a man who is mysteriously imprisoned and then just as mysteriously released has plenty of spattered brain matter and sadistic gut-punches. What it lacks is the …

The stakes-raising gambit that The Hunger Games: Catching Fire plays in order to surpass the original Hunger Games is this: after Katniss's rebel-tinged victory in the 74th Games, President Snow decides to make the 75th …

A new study, published in the journal Pediatrics, has found that in 2012, the mean level of gun violence in PG-13 films exceeded the level of gun violence in R-rated films. That’s just gun violence …

Here's how to play: Thor: The Dark World steals from a lot of films. Like, a lot. Pick one of them. Then, change one of the famous lines from that film to make it into …

David Koechner is probably best known for playing San Diego sportscaster Champ Kind in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Michael Scott's obnoxious friend Todd Packer on The Office. Personally, I'm very fond of …

Everybody loves 12 Years a Slave. Well, almost everybody. Look, I know what you're thinking. "Oh, Marks is just a contrarian from the School of Armond White. Of course he's not going to like a …

The image above is actually the film's second opening shot. It's the opening of chapter one in the story. What comes before is a prologue. The prologue opens with a shot of an utterly calm …

Poor Scott. Forced to damn Bad Grandpa with faint praise. Only three stars, alas. For any other franchise save Marty Movies Inc., that would be high praise. Here, there is the unmistakable pungency of disappointment. …

So word has just come that Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit has been bumped from a Christmas Day release date to...mid-January. Thank you, Mr. Grinch, for making it clear just what that means. Judging from the …

Not too much to say here, except maybe that this looks like a pretty terrible superhero movie and maybe a pretty good spy thriller, except for the godawful music. I mean, I enjoyed being a …