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Kevin Rafferty makes the case for remembrance and for the art of the story in his preposterously entertaining documentary “Harvard Beats Yale 29-29.”
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Before the action starts in Ridley Scott's "Body of Lies," a few lines from W.H. Auden's "September 1, 1939" flash up on the screen
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“The Express” is an honorable example of a tried-and-true formula, aimed at a large cross-section of the moviegoing public: people who love football and hate racism.
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“Night and Weekends” observes the failing days of a relationship and an awkward, post-breakup reunion.
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Daddy Yankee, a big star in the musical genre of reggaetón, takes his big-screen shot in “Talento de Barrio.”
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Moonlight, mist and thick tropical air permeate the landscape of “La León,” a sumptuous film about the swirling of desire in the Paraná Delta.
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Written and directed with unrelenting cynicism by 22-year-old Luke Eberl, “Choose Connor” is undeniably obvious and intermittently awkward.
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In “Breakfast With Scot,” an effeminate 11-year-old boy who loves boas, beads and Broadway musicals is taken in by a semi-closeted gay male couple.
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At moments “City of Ember” suggests a mild satire of end-of-days ideology.
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Ridley Scott’s new movie, “Body of Lies,” raises a potentially disturbing question. If terrorism has become boring, does that mean the terrorists have won?
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“Happy-Go-Lucky” is closely tuned to the pulse of communal life, to the rhythms of how people work, play and struggle together.
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“Quarantine,” yet another pseudo-documentary horror movie, delivers the heebie-jeebies with solid acting and perfectly calibrated shocks.
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Without forcing comparisons, “Frontrunners” finds parallels between the election at Stuyvesant High and the current national election.
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“Mary” is a convoluted, hysterical mess of a movie with grandiose spiritual airs and not a drop of humor.
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“Max Payne” is content to be an efficient vehicle for the delivery of a familiar range of sensations, some of which almost rise to the level of feelings.
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“W.” does something most journalism and even documentaries can’t or won’t do: it reminds us what a long, strange trip it’s been to the Bush White House.
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“The Secret Life of Bees” insists so strenuously on its themes of redemption, tolerance, love and healing that it winds up defeating itself.
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Pop go the dialectics in “Filth and Wisdom,” a tale of bumping and grinding your way to happiness from the hardest-working hard body in show business.
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The title of Barry Levinson’s new movie, “What Just Happened,” is not phrased as a question, but if it were it would demand another question in response: “Who cares?”
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“W.” does something most journalism and even documentaries can’t or won’t do: it reminds us what a long, strange trip it’s been to the Bush White House.
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“Morning Light” is a sweepingly beautiful documentary unmoored by democratic intentions.
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In the once booming, now fading steel town of Portsmouth, Ohio, two friends share a talent for spotting the apelike creature most popularly known as Bigfoot.
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Dysfunction beguiles in “Good Dick,” a perverse romantic comedy whose coarse title belies its tender heart.
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“Who Does She Think She Is?” is an engaging documentary about the struggle to create art while nurturing life.
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Without Daniel Craig’s 007-enhanced profile, it’s unlikely that “Flashbacks of a Fool” would have appeared anywhere except the Netflix queues of his most rabid fans.
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Does the world need yet another peppy gay self-esteem indie like “Tru Loved”? Probably not, though the writer and director Stewart Wade pulls this one off with heart.
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There is in fact an elephant in “The Elephant King,” but his keepers are far from royal.
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“Azur & Asmar” unfolds in a flat, storybook style worlds away from the sculptured digital aesthetic pioneered by Pixar and emulated by everyone else.
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The most notable thing about “Sex Drive” is that it reserves all its creativity for ways to revolt and ostensibly delight its target audience.
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We pondered sub-prime teen sex comedy Sex Drive with the cast of Gossip Girl. At a Pratt Institute benefit at Chelsea Piers, the prince of the Palazzo Chupi, Julian Schnabel, told us exactly what he thinks about John McCain. We waved goodbye to George W. Bush and Cindy McCain at the premiere of W. Blythe Danner gave us some useful recession style tips at the launch for Key to the Cure (plus: Ronsons, Real Housewives, and Lindsay Lohan). Maxim editor Chris Wilson explained how he got dumped by Oprah. The sexual assault lawsuit filed against Jeffrey Epstein was dismissed.
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Moments of obviousness are offset by a feeling of gritty lyricism in Wayne Wang’s “Princess of Nebraska,” a beautifully shot but awkwardly acted movie that is available only online.
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Gonzalo Arijón’s documentary “Stranded” offers an incontrovertible argument for the necessity of team spirit in the face of catastrophe.
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“Fear(s) of the Dark” is an animated anthology that tells its stories with an inventiveness that’s seldom scary but never less than mesmerizing.
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Party must end at kickoff, and U-Haul trucks and kegs won't be allowed.
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“Let the Right One In” takes the morbid unhappiness of its young characters seriously.
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To say that Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York” is one of the best films of the year is such a pathetic response to its soaring ambition that I might as well pack it in right now.
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When it works best, “Changeling” is a feverish and bluntly effective parable of wronged innocence.
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You learn little by way of hard facts about the adored French soccer star and famous head-butter Zinédine Zidane in the formalist exercise that bears his name.
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“Pride and Glory,” directed by Gavin O’Connor, plods across familiar ground. It’s yet another movie about the fraternal disorder of the police.
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In the drama “I’ve Loved You So Long,” Kristin Scott Thomas’s furious honesty rules out easy, unearned redemption.
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How lovely the American high school experience might be if it offered even a smidgen of the euphoria in “High School Musical 3: Senior Year.”
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There’s not a moment of warmth or ease in “Ben X,” Nic Balthazar’s punishingly cacophonous debut.
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Keith Haring was not a great artist. He might not even have been a very good one. But he was the right person in the right place at the right time.
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Amos Gitai gets a lot of mileage out of a small metaphor in the third film in which he looks at people who have lived in a house in West Jerusalem over the decades.
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The heroes of “The Gay Bed & Breakfast of Terror” are so catty, obnoxious and generally unpleasant, you can’t wait for them to start getting hacked to bits.
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Staged plays just aren’t that cinematic, and even under the capable direction of Rowan Joseph, Ben McKenzie doesn’t provide enough spark to offset the problem.
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“Saving Marriage” is an in-the-trenches, defiantly partisan and exuberantly big-hearted movie.
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The television series “Noah’s Arc” has yielded, “Sex and the City” style, its own feature: an agreeable melodrama unlikely to reach an audience beyond that of the show.
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The filmmaking in “The Soviet Story” is so overwrought that at times the movie comes across as comical.
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