The Tony nominations were released this morning, and the musical film adaptation Once leads the field with 11 nominations; it’s nominated for Best Musical alongside Newsies, Nice Work If You Can Get It, and Leap of Faith. The nominees for Best Play include Clybourne Park (a Pultizer-winning play), Other Desert Cities, Peter and the Starcatcher, Read More
Traditional, expertly written plays about important issues, with real people saying real things to each other on skillfully designed sets that evoke total naturalistic consistency, are in great demand and short supply. It is therefore a thrill to spread the welcome mat for Man and Boy, the 1963 play about corruption in the world of business and finance, by the great Terence Rattigan. To celebrate the centennial year of a writer who was, along with his contemporary Noel Coward, renowned for emotional subtext and elegance of syntax, the Roundabout has graced us with a splendid revival of one of his lesser but bolder plays, briskly directed by Maria Aitken, with a blazing centerpiece performance by Frank Langella that simmers with fury and rage. Read More
Based on one of the most publicized and speculative missing-persons cases in the annals of New York’s unsolved murder files, All Good Things is a fascinating, well-documented combination love story-murder mystery that will leave you guessing, much like the real-life case itself, 28 years after the fact. Sharply directed by Andrew Jarecki and starring Ryan Read More
“Are you a bee? Do you like to sting people?” a handsome banking executive in a merlot-colored suit growls to his protégé. It is early afternoon in the third-floor offices of a midtown skyscraper, the News Corporation headquarters, and select middle-aged men are watching an advanced screening of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, the Oliver Read More
Monday: Gossip Girl
There is some wear on these treads—specifically with regards to Blair, who has been spinning her wheels in a swampy mess of weekly plotting and scheming for no real reason other than the script telling her to do so—but those breathlessly wailing about the demise of Gossip Girl couldn’t have Read More
The Caller
Running time 92 minutes
Written by Alain-Didier Weill and Richard Ledes
Directed by Richard Ledes
Starring Frank Langella, Elliott Gould
Along the same shaky lines, The Caller is a loopy, talky, 92-minute two-hander with Elliott Gould and Frank Langella (on a downward Read More
We’ve had something on our minds since sitting through box-office smash Four Christmases last weekend. How young is too young to see a PG-13? We realize that with its slapstick humor, baby vomit and distinctive lack of swear words, Four Christmases could be considered a "family film". But mixed in with all the holiday cheer are jokes Read More
Frost/Nixon
Running time 122 minutes
Written by Peter Morgan
Directed by Ron Howard
Starring Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Kevin Bacon, Toby Jones, Oliver Platt
Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon, from the screenplay by Peter Morgan, based on his play, succeeds magnificently in re-creating the historic 1977 television interview as a gripping suspense Read More
Frost/Nixon
Running time 122 minutes
Written by Peter Morgan
Directed by Ron Howard
Starring Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Kevin Bacon, Toby Jones, Oliver Platt
If timing is everything, what better moment than the eve of a new presidency to unveil Ron Howard’s riveting, psychologically astute film version of Frost/Nixon? With Read More
Toward the end of the film Frost/Nixon, based on the Peter Morgan play of the same name, Frank Langella‘s Richard Nixon wonders whether his legacy will prevent young people from aspiring to a life in politics. "They’ll think it’s all just corrupt," he laments.
"I always felt that line was powerful," director Ron Read More
