Margin Call: Sell High
Talk about great timing: Margin Call premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last winter to middling buzz and reviews, but now this drama —...
Elevate: Rêves du Hoop
Any documentary about basketball has to contend with the long shadow cast by Hoop Dreams. The new film Elevate isn’t in that league, yet...
Anonymous: Shakespeare in Lies
The whole idea that Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare’s plays is a load of crap. I feel safe saying this, having spent a chunk of...
Puss in Boots: Break an Egg
The biggest problem with Puss in Boots is that it has come out five years too late. The feline adventurer voiced by Antonio Banderas...
Low Heat
After several decades’ worth of movie directors’ sons taking up their fathers’ line of work, now we’re seeing directors’ daughters do the same, and...
Penn’s States
“Why are you interviewing me?” Lindsay Penn suddenly asked me in the middle of our recent talk. She wasn’t asking out of false modesty...
Footloose: Almost Paradise
Like many of you, I had zero expectations for the remake of Footloose. The original 1984 film has already had a second life as...
The Big Year: First-Degree Birders
I am not a birder, but I can sympathize with them. Check me out in early December when I’m frantically tracking down Greek experimental...
Ides of March: Then Fall Caesar
There’s a difference between coolness and coldness. As an actor, George Clooney is cool, and the even-keeled assurance he projects onscreen often informs the...
No Relief from Restless
Hot on the heels of 50/50 comes another movie about cancer, the less funny, more irritating, and all-around inferior Restless. The unfortunate timing doesn’t...
