Movies starring Paul Dano

Looper is a tremendous motion picture experience. Not merely a "very good" one, but a great one. It delivers on all possible levels and its missteps are few and minor. It's a rousing science fiction/fantasy tale with a dose of hard-hitting drama, a...

In recent years, some of the most outlandish and edgy movies have emerged from South Korea, where directors like Kim Ki-duk, Park Chan-wook, and Bong Joon-ho have challenged norms and defied conventions. The results, although not always succes...

The Batman, a reboot of DC comics’ most popular character, brings the franchise back into the shadows successfully embraced by Christopher Nolan’s phenomenally popular take but without the fetishism of the Burton/Schumacher years or the excess...

After watching Ruby Sparks, I asked myself a question: Did I enjoy it as much as I did because it brings such a breezy perspective to a tired genre or because it offers a unique point-of-view of creativity and the writing process? I'm not sure Ruby...

Whodunits are rarely a good playground for Hollywood films. The average mystery, whether a stripped-down Agatha Christie-esque tale or a more complex endeavor, is too demanding for the structural constraints of a motion picture. As a result, when o...

12 Years a Slave, sure to be a heavy hitter when the 2014 Oscar nominations are announced, is a powerful and compelling adaptation of Solomon Northup's autobiographical account of the dozen years he spent as a slave on Louisiana plantations from 18...

The best things about Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood are not elements that will build large audiences. This is a film about character development/disintegration and a comprehensive look at the early days of the oil industry. The more ...

It takes a deft hand to fashion a feel-good movie with plenty of laughs and an upbeat ending out of a story that includes drug addiction, a suicide attempt, a death, Nietzsche, and Proust. Despite treading through a minefield of tone shifts, co-di...

The Ballad of Jack and Rose is a low-key character study about a father and daughter whose idyllic lifestyle is interrupted by the arrival of three newcomers. Not much happens in this film beyond the evolution of the characters and their relationshi...

The Girl Next Door builds up enough good will during its successful first half that we're willing to forgive some of the strange and disappointing convolutions the plot takes us through during the final 45 minutes. There are two primary reasons wh...