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With Two Lovers, director James Gray has remained geographically within his comfort zone (New York City), but has moved textually away from the crime and corruption-laced stories that have marked his previous efforts. This is strictly a character-...

What can I write about Two Weeks Notice that I haven't written about every mediocre romantic comedy to come down Hollywood's pipeline? There's the cotton candy comparison – the movie is sweet (sometimes too sweet) and airy, with so little substa...

Spoilers! Yeah, I talk about the ending. Although the name makes it sound like a monster movie (which it could be, after a fashion), Tyrannosaur is actually a member of a peculiar class of film unique to the U.K.: the "feel bad" tale of working...

During the latter years of the 20th century, no sports figure was more compelling and controversial than Mike Tyson, who scaled the heights of unifying boxing's heavyweight championships and descended into the hell of scandal and crime. With Tyson...

As a snapshot of the U.S. cultural scene during the late 1960s and early 1970s, The U.S. Versus John Lennon is a success. As an opportunity to hear some of Lennon's solo songs within a political context, the movie works. Unfortunately, as a piece...

Hollywood, it seems, has lost the knack of how to make a good romantic comedy. The best two such films of 2009, Adventureland and (500) Days of Summer, have come down the indie trail. The major studios are unwilling to fund any production that do...

Kudos to Sony for not holding advance screenings of Ultraviolet. This is the kind of crap you want to keep away from critics. Masochist that I am, I went to see this on my own dime, and regret every cent spent to gain admission to the theater. T...

History has decreed that Umberto D., a 1952 film from celebrated Italian director Vittorio De Sica, is one of the best representations of neo-realism committed to film. (Ingmar Bergman called it a “favorite movie” and Martin Scorsese labeled i...

In addition to being employer and employee, Stephane (Daniel Auteuil) and Maxime (Andre Dussollier) share an intimate friendship. Stephane works for Maxime at an exclusive Paris violin repair shop. One evening, while the two are at dinner, Maxime...

The “hook” intended to lure in viewers to Tom Gormican’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is the marquee-topping selection of Nicolas Cage as “Nick Cage.” The film gets a lot of mileage (perhaps too much) out of this meta casting....