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The British indie explosion
From left, Tom Hardy in "Bronson," Michael Sheen in "The Damned United" and Carey Mulligan in "An Education"Is it pure coincidence that three of the fall season's best movies are opening right on top...
View Article“Exit Through the Gift Shop”: Art-world rebel Banksy exposed (almost)
Sincerity always poses problems for the news media. Maybe the press has professionally inoculated itself with a vigorous blend of skepticism and cynicism, and maybe it's just grown ever more fearful of...
View ArticlePick of the week: “Down Terrace”
If I use the phrase "crime family drama," you have a pretty good idea what to expect, right? I mean, they vary somewhat: There are the Corleones and the Sopranos, the high-living Triad clans of Hong...
View Article“Made in Dagenham”: A patronizing film about working-class feminism
It's not like "Made in Dagenham" marks the first time a fascinating historical episode has been made into mediocre melodrama. Moviemakers have ransacked history since the medium was invented, but the...
View Article“The King’s Speech”: Colin Firth’s Oscar-bound performance
I went to "The King's Speech" completely prepared to dig in and resist it: a British period piece, suffused with imperial nostalgia, about a member of the royal family nobly battling a disability....
View Article“The Iron Lady”: Meryl Streep’s bravura turn as Maggie Thatcher
It's easy to take Meryl Streep for granted, and to view her uncanny ability to disappear inside virtually any kind of character as a form of shtick or a parlor trick. It's perfectly true that Streep...
View ArticlePick of the week: A dozen pints to the apocalypse!
If you’ve seen “Shaun of the Dead” or “Hot Fuzz,” the previous two films in what we can now call Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s England trilogy, you know more or less what you’re in for with “The...
View ArticlePick of the week: Pagan sex replaces Christianity on a creepy island
Even in the various butchered versions available over the decades, Robin Hardy’s 1973 film “The Wicker Man” – which was not released in the United States until 1979 – has attained the status of a...
View ArticlePick of the week: A dozen pints to the apocalypse!
If you’ve seen “Shaun of the Dead” or “Hot Fuzz,” the previous two films in what we can now call Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s England trilogy, you know more or less what you’re in for with “The...
View ArticlePick of the week: Pagan sex replaces Christianity on a creepy island
Even in the various butchered versions available over the decades, Robin Hardy’s 1973 film “The Wicker Man” – which was not released in the United States until 1979 – has attained the status of a...
View Article“A Field in England”: A 17th-century ‘shroom trip
If you had shown me Ben Wheatley’s crazy, brain-eating tour de force “A Field in England” and told me it was a rediscovered British underground cult film from 1973, made by some drugged-out young...
View ArticleScarlett Johansson preys on hot dudes!
If I tell you that Jonathan Glazer’s “Under the Skin” is one of the strangest and most disturbing science-fiction films of recent years, it’s a true statement that points you in entirely the wrong...
View Article“The Trip to Italy”: A deceptively genius road-trip romp
When British comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon find themselves in the catacombs of the Fontanelle Cemetery in Naples, an ancient underground ossuary visited by Ingrid Bergman in the Rossellini film...
View ArticleInside the Troubles of “’71″: This Belfast war thriller is (almost) an Iraq...
What was often called the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland may look like an almost inexplicable event from this historical distance: three decades of low-level, three-way guerrilla warfare (roughly 1969...
View Article"Exit Through the Gift Shop": Art-world rebel Banksy exposed (almost)
No, it's not a hoax -- but the British street artist's hilarious documentary is a head-spinning, wild ride
View Article"Made in Dagenham": A patronizing film about working-class feminism
Sally Hawkins is tremendous, but "Made in Dagenham's" approach to the historic auto-plant strike just feels canned
View Article"The King's Speech": Colin Firth's Oscar-bound performance
Pick of the week: The actor shines as George VI in "The King's Speech" -- a surprising tale about fading empire
View Article"The Iron Lady": Meryl Streep's bravura turn as Maggie Thatcher
The ferocious former prime minister becomes almost likable in "The Iron Lady" -- because it ignores her ideas
View ArticlePick of the week: A dozen pints to the apocalypse!
Pick of the week: "Shaun of the Dead" creators end their Brit-com trilogy with a boozy bang in "The World's End"
View ArticlePick of the week: Pagan sex replaces Christianity on a creepy island
Dazzlingly restored, "The Wicker Man" is more like an anarchic, erotic parable than a horror film
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