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Movies: "Anna Karenina"
Here’s a handsome Christmas present in the form of a highly original and sumptuous staging of the Leo Tolstoy novel, scripted by the great British playwright Tom Stoppard and directed by Joe Wright...
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Movies: "Jack Reacher"
The thing millions of readers of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels all know is that this almost-mythical American drifter and crime stopper is a big guy, 6 foot five inches tall and built like a missile...
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Movies: "Django Unchained"
Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” starts out wonderfully but devolves into a hot, bloody mess. As we all know, Tarantino loves genre movies and this one is his personal mash-up of spaghetti...
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Movies: "Silver Linings Playbook"
“Excelsior” -- ever upward -- is the motto Pat (Bradley Cooper) has been espousing ever since an act of uncontrollable violence landed him in a mental institution for eight months. Now he’s been taken...
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Movies: "Zero Dark Thirty"
It’s been playing in selected cities for weeks now, but Kathryn Bigelow’s riveting Osama Bin Laden manhunt movie is finally here. Bigelow and her screenwriter Mark Boal won Oscars for their 2008...
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Movies: "Broken City"
“Broken City” is a nifty political thriller with clever writing, a solid cast and scenes of New York City shot so clearly they seem to pop off the screen. The movie opens with undercover cop Billy...
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Movies: "Parker"
January tends toward movie doldrums, as the big studios focus on the upcoming awards for their December releases. But a couple of B-movie thrillers have livened things up this month: first “Broken...
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Movies: "Stand Up Guys"
Like the undead rising from the grave, some of Hollywood’s superannuated stars are lumbering back to the big screen. There’s Sylvester Stallone, still violent after all these years in “Bullet to the...
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Movies: "Side Effects"
Here’s a somewhat delayed take on one of the few grown-up movies playing during this bleak post-Oscar season, a medical thriller directed, shot and edited by Steven Soderbergh (under several assumed...
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Movies: "Oz the Great and Powerful"
Disney Studios took a big risk with this prequel to “The Wizard of Oz.” After all, the original is one of the most beloved movies in history; any attempt to tinker with it would bring out the...
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Movies: "Admission"
Unlike most of the rest of the country, I went to see “Admission.” That is because the movie is set at Princeton University, my (ahem) alma mater. In this, I was not disappointed. The scenes of...
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Movies: "The Place Beyond the Pines"
The title is confusing, sounding perhaps like some teen horror movie, but it’s actually the Mohawk name for Schenectady, NY, where this complex, well-made film takes place.It opens with a bravura...
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Movies: "The Company You Keep"
As our nation tries to understand a new episode of domestic terrorism, here’s a movie that looks back at another time of terror attacks, by the Weather Underground during the Vietnam War era of the...
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Movies: "Mud"
“Mud” is the kind of movie people say Hollywood doesn’t make anymore: low-key, character-driven and featuring a solid cast. As a summer of bombastic blockbusters is about to bear down on us, it’s...
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Movies: "The Sapphires"
Based on a true story, “The Sapphires” shows us the early career of Australia’s first all-Aborigine girl group and offers up a tasty sampling of 1960s soul music.As the newsreel clips at the start of...
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Movies: "The Great Gatsby"
Poor F. Scott Fitzgerald. Kicked out of Princeton. Saw his early literary stardom go down the drain. Wife Zelda committed to various mental institutions. Dead of drink at the age of 44. And now...
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Movies: "Star Trek Into Darkness"
The new “Star Trek” reunites the young crew that producer/director J.J. Abrams put together for his 2009 sequel to the long-running TV and movie series, and he’s thrown in some heavyweight supporting...
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Movies: "Frances Ha"
Tall, broad-shouldered and a little ungainly, Greta Gerwig plays Frances, and though she’s surrounded by friends and acquaintances throughout this movie, it’s practically a one-woman show. (Gerwig...
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Movies: "Man of Steel"
If you thought “The Avengers” was over the top, wait ‘till you get a load of the new Superman movie. Directed by Zack Snyder, who knows a thing or two about comic book movies, having made “Watchmen”...
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Movies: "The East"
So here’s a low-key thriller about eco-terrorism with none of the usual car chases, explosions and gruesome murders. Sounds refreshing, doesn’t it? What makes it even more unusual is that it was...
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