Movies about farming interest me about as much as the devaluation of the Chinese yuan. So it is with querulous satisfaction that I find At Any Price, an uneven but timeless story of the decline of the American family farm during perilous times of increasing corporate control, so personal, human and compelling. Dennis Quaid, who Read More
Robert Bartleh Cummings, better known as Rob Zombie, heavy metal screamer and director of such trash as House of 1000 Corpses, is a goremeister who turns movies into the cinematic equivalent of sonic waterboarding. The new one is a tale from the crypt called The Lords of Salem. It would make a much better comic Read More
French auteur and film festival favorite François Ozon, a specialist in psychosexual thrillers such as Swimming Pool and Under the Sand (both starring the alluring Charlotte Rampling), lost his edge and his footing with his last six releases. It’s good to see him return to form with In the House, a suspenseful study of a Read More
Talk about lousy timing. On the heels of his triumphant, Oscar-winning Argo, Ben Affleck now has the bad luck to have to suffer through the postponed release of To the Wonder, a lethally boring and relentlessly inert disaster by the pretentious writer-director Terrence Malick that he probably considered unreleasable. It was Mr. Affleck himself who, Read More
Movies about baseball heroes usually suffer from one of two problems: too much about the sport and not enough about the hero, or too much heroism and not enough baseball. 42, the latest in a long line of movies about Jackie Robinson—a hero who defines the word heroic—finds a nice balance between the man and Read More
Another cautionary tale about the dangers of technology, Disconnect has a lot to say about how we live now—online, 24/7, drained of love, faith, the joy of serendipity and the pleasure of intimate communication. Vitally contemporary and relevant but with a bracing respect for narrative coherence, it centers on three separate sets of people who Read More
Audiences cheering so loudly at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre that they drown out the noise of the traffic on West 45th Street have turned a loud, vulgar, mediocre drag show called Kinky Boots into an unqualified hit. How I wish I could join the applause without reservation, but what has been done to cheapen, coarsen Read More
On Friday night the actress Sean Young paid tribute to her friend Karen Black before a crowd at the Nitehawk Cinema in Brooklyn, which, for the next couple of months, will be featuring Ms. Black’s work.
“Everywhere I’ve lived, I’ve always had Karen over,” Ms. Young said, “and we’ve always had this kind of running joke, because she’s kind of wild” — she flailed out her arms — “and crazy and wonderful.” Read More
Part psychological thriller, part supernatural horror flick and 100 percent phony, 6 Souls benefits from a sound cast working hard to produce goose bumps, but even Julianne Moore fails to work miracles. She plays Dr. Cara Harding, the kind of practical-thinking forensic psychologist who believes that the theory of multiple-personality syndrome is just a fad, Read More
Dating since high school, two cute young newlyweds find that marriage in troubled economic times can’t survive solely on love and unemployment checks. Alice (Juno Temple) is smart but can’t get a job. John (Michael Angarano) is fired from his dead-end job selling computer warranties for a boss whose motto is “productivity, performance and punctuality”—all Read More
