Movies
Published on January 22, 2021 - Page 14
Ramin Bahrani, the Iranian-American filmmaker, started out with the simple story of a pushcart vendor in 2005’s “Man Push Cart.” His films have...
Published on January 17, 2021 - Page 18
Doug Liman’s “Locked Down” is one of the first and most ambitious films to be conceived and shot during the pandemic. It’s like our own quarantine...
Published on January 17, 2021 - Page 18
The potential pitfalls of a movie that brings together Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown for a night on Feb. 25, 1964, seem so...
Published on January 15, 2021 - Page 12
There’s an iconic photograph of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. taken as he boarded one of the first integrated buses in Montgomery, Alabama. That...
Published on January 10, 2021 - Page 14
Phyllida Lloyd’s “Herself” is an Irish drama of spousal abuse set against Dublin’s housing crisis. It has some narrative weak spots but its...
Published on January 10, 2021 - Page 22
When it’s at its best, “I’m Your Woman” feels like you’ve slipped through a trap door, revealing a hidden pathway in an old genre apparatus....
Published on January 9, 2021 - Page 14
The protagonists in Judd Apatow movies are emotionally stunted, occasionally underachieving, unmotivated to change and often border on unlikable. But...
Published on January 9, 2021 - Page 14
In “Pieces of a Woman,” Martha (Vanessa Kirby) is in labor with her first child with partner Sean (Shia LaBeouf). For almost 30 minutes, we see the...
Published on January 9, 2021 - Page 18
The film “Sound of Metal” starts with the uncomfortably loud noises of guitar feedback. It ends two hours later with absolute silence. The trip...
Published on January 9, 2021 - Page 18
“The Social Dilemma” is an eye-opening look into the way social media is designed to create addiction and manipulate our behavior. It’s told by some...
Published on January 8, 2021 - Page 14
It’s hard to decide what’s most shocking in “The Dissident,” Bryan Fogel’s new documentary about the murder of Saudi columnist Jamal Khashoggi....
Published on December 27, 2020 - Page 14
Tom Hanks rides a horse and blasts a six-shooter in his new film, “News of the World.” The Oscar winner plays Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd in 1870. He...
Published on December 27, 2020 - Page 20
It’s summertime in Harlem in 1957 when we get to know the beautiful souls at the center of “Sylvie’s Love.” Sylvie (Tessa Thompson) works at the...
Published on December 26, 2020 - Page 17
A film as bracingly original as Emerald Fennell’s “Promising Young Woman” defies labels. Here’s a few good adjectives, though: Startling — the only...
Published on December 25, 2020 - Page 12
George Clooney directs and stars in “The Midnight Sky,” a film adaptation of Lily Brooks-Dalton’s novel “Good Morning, Midnight.” He has managed to...
Published on December 25, 2020 - Page 16
Pete Docter’s “Soul” features stairway-to-heaven visions of the afterlife, a pre-birth “before” realm where souls are glowing turquoise orbs and an...
Published on December 20, 2020 - Page 11
If you’re going to make a movie about wish fulfillment, 1980s America is about as good as you can do for a setting outside the Arabian Desert. “...
Published on December 18, 2020 - Page 14
Chadwick Boseman surges onto the screen as fast-talking trumpeter Levee in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” He’s like a man on an electrified tightrope —...
Published on December 14, 2020 - Page 6
Irish accents are notoriously tricky. So it is a little alarming the first voice you hear in “Wild Mountain Thyme” is Christopher Walken’s, who...
Published on December 13, 2020 - Page 18
This isn’t a great time for the cruise ship industry. Given that obvious fact, Cunard is likely to be thrilled a new movie takes place —or 90% of it...
Published on December 13, 2020 - Page 29
Can one movie make up for a year without musical theater? Ryan Murphy’s “The Prom” tries its damnedest. But despite a promising opening and a...
Published on December 11, 2020 - Page 17
It’s a demonstrably difficult task to find a comic screen partner worthy of standing opposite Melissa McCarthy. So you have to appreciate “...
Published on December 10, 2020 - Page 7
In one history of the movies, “Citizen Kane” screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz might look like a footnote. The former playwright had a hand in many...
Published on December 4, 2020 - Page 7
“Ammonite” unearths the stories of two women buried by history: paleontologist Mary Anning and geologist Charlotte Murchison. In the 19th century,...
Published on November 29, 2020 - Page 29
“Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square” tests the limits of what one can reasonably categorize as a film. There is nothing cinematic in this 98-...
Published on November 29, 2020 - Page 29
Harper (Mackenzie Davis) is a reporter living in Pittsburgh with her art-student girlfriend Abby (Kristen Stewart). She has yet to come out to her...
Published on November 26, 2020 - Page 9
Remember “The Croods”? The 2013 animated film about a cave family featured the voices of Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds and Cloris Leachman...
Published on November 22, 2020 - Page 16
Teenage political junkies at a leadership conference doesn’t seem like the most riveting subject matter for a documentary. But the documentary “Boys...
Published on November 15, 2020 - Page 7
J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” is an election-year explainer to liberal America about the white underclass that fueled Donald Trump’s rise. Now, it’s...
Published on November 15, 2020 - Page 7
Three-quarters through “The Climb” comes a scene we’ve all come to expect in a romantic comedy: A wedding is interrupted by the best man who rushes...