Search for Drama

At the risk of being called a curmudgeon, let me voice a dissenting opinion about Wonder, a “family drama” that veers too far into saccharine fantasy for its messages about tolerance and anti-bullying to sound a clear and genuine note. Oh,...

Back in mid-'90s, director Curtis Hanson was known as a B-list filmmaker - someone who could cull a fair amount of tension out of workmanlike stories such as The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and The River Wild. All of that changed in 1997, however, ...

There was a time when the opening of a Woody Allen movie was considered (at least in serious cinema circles) as an event. Over the years, however, the quality of Allen’s output has diminished. Now, it’s at the point where a good Woody Alle...

On the one hand, The Wonder is a fascinating examination of the war between the sacred and the scientific. On the other hand, despite its strong sense of atmosphere and an intense performance by lead actress Florence Pugh, it’s strangely uninvol...

Wonderful World feels like a modern-day half-baked riff on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Despite a film festival pedigree (it was shown at a number of local festivals on the 2009 circuit), the movie is so lightweight and inconsequential that ...

There's no nudity whatsoever in James Cox's Wonderland, which is ironic, since it's about events from the life of the first big-time porn star, John Holmes (Val Kilmer). Unlike Boogie Nights, which was loosely based on the rise and fall of Holmes d...

Wonderstruck is an evocative movie with a vaguely disappointing narrative that, although it reaches a conclusion, doesn’t justify the patience viewers must exhibit to reach that point. More successful as an exercise in style and re-creation,...

Nicholas Sparks wasn't involved with the development of The Words, but he might as well have been. There's a distinctly "Sparks-ian" feel to the movie, and its awkward framing device recalls the one from The Notebook. In fact, structure more than t...

The World of Apu (Apur Sansar) concludes one of the greatest film series of all time, Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy, which chronicles the life of one Bengali boy as he traverses the road from childhood through adolescence to maturity. Ray, a mast...

Turning back the calendar to the morning of September 11, 2001 is a risky proposition for any director, and not to be undertaken lightly. Paul Greengrass succeeded brilliantly with his United 93 and now Oliver Stone, never one to back away from a ...