“Catching Fire” picks up where “The Hunger Games” left off. Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) have returned home to District 12, triumphant but troubled. The pair’s impromptu final act of defiance at the 74th Annual Hunger games – their decision to commit double suicide by poison …
Matthew McConaughey is on a roll with his roles: killer, outlaw, stripper and sadomasochist, to name a few recent outings. And the Texan that started out in Richard Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused” and had a gift for John Grisham in “A Time to Kill,” gives each new character a sense …
Must-See Movies Beyond the Blockbusters James Gray weds personal ancestry and opera in a drama about a Polish sister, Ewa Cybulski (Marion Cotillard), who walks off the boat at Ellis Island in 1921 into the arms of a well-dressed shyster, Bruno Weiss (Joaquin Phoenix). Having left behind her coughing …
] Perhaps it’s unfair to critique a movie based on a Danish film that virtually nobody in America has seen, “A Hijacking,” so let’s just begin with this: I caught up with “Captain Phillips” yesterday at The Moviehouse in Millerton, NY, with my son. Its conventionality surprised me given that …
Hope for the best, don’t expect the worst. It’s my movie criticism mantra, but as the lights darkened at the Princess of Wales Theater for “Gravity’s” Canadian gala, already hailed as a masterpiece following a Venice Film Festival Premiere, it wasn’t just the fact that I was way up in …
from Yahoo! Movies www.movies.yahoo.com Like a bastard love child of Terrence Malick and Robert Altman, David Lowery’s crime drama shuffles to its own drummer. Either you dance to it or you can skip away, but the latter would be a mistake in an era of cookie cutter genre pics. The …
Must-See Movies Beyond the Blockbusters We’ve all heard the stories of the Cannes Film Festival audience booing the premiere of “Only God Forgives,” Nicolas Winding Refn’s first film after “Drive” with Ryan Gosling back front and center. Not very forgiving, huh? Those who are less judgmental, or less enamored of …
Must-See Movies Beyond the Blockbusters A kindergartner kisses her teacher on the lips in the school playroom. Taken aback by the unexpected intimacy, the teacher nonetheless sets her straight: little girls do not kiss grown men on the lips. Then a little boy interrupts to initiate a pillow fight. Ashamed, …
One of the many interesting discoveries in Whoopi Goldberg’s Moms Mabley biopic, “I’ve Got Somethin’ to Tell You,” which I saw at the Provincetown Town Hall with John Waters in the audience, was Eddie Murphy’s on-camera confession. He said that he fashioned his sassy black grandmother in “The Nutty Professor” …
Must-See Movies Beyond the Blockbusters Love her or hate her, Sofia Coppola has cornered the market on the world of privilege and its discontents. And so it goes with the writer-director’s latest movie, “The Bling Ring,” based on a Vanity Fair true-crime-in-the-Hollywood-Hills article. The film, in limited release this weekend …
Must-See Movies Beyond the Blockbusters “Before Midnight,” the third and richest collaboration between Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy and director Richard Linklater, finds the French and American couple Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke) still talking, talking, talking – and making love. Having met on a train nearly two decades …
While bromances flourish – doctors, racecar drivers and superheroes bond regularly — memorable movies about best girlfriends are a rare species. But in that environment, “Frances Ha,” the brilliant black-and-white comic collaboration between star-writer Greta Gerwig (“To Rome with Love”) and writer-director Noah Baumbach (“Greenberg”), is a game-changer. Best friends …
Must-See Movies Beyond the Blockbusters Watching “Stories We Tell” feels like sharing a comfy couch beside a close friend — who happens to be an amazing storyteller with a show-stopping secret. In her third film as a writer-director (“Away From Her,” “Take This Waltz”), the Canadian actress Sarah Polley, 34, …
Beauty is a bitch. That’s always animated the Snow White story: Vanity and jealousy drive the evil stepmother queen to slip Snow White that poisoned apple. Now, along comes “Snow White and the Huntsman,” which is all about teasing out the backstory of these Grimm characters and asking, “Why?” Why …
