Latest Movie Reviews

A narrative miscalculation torpedoes Hyde Park on the Hudson, which offers a portrait of the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt from the perspective of the least interesting person in the room.

Like its predecessor, ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ benefits from superb casting and bold, escapist flair.

So when Warner moved its 3D Gatsby from an award-seducing Christmas release date to a later summer slot, there was reasonable suspicion that this audacious, ostentatious take on the classic tale simply sucked.

This sar-laden stinker from The Bucket List scripter Justin Zackham begins with Diane Keaton walking in on Robert De Niro going down on Susan Sarandon.

Olivier Assayas’ moony, meandering coming-of-age tale does such a good job of de-glamorising the chain-smoking, Marx-spouting teenage radicals of ’70s Paris, that your palms itch to smack them.

Unfairly overlooked amid the riches of ’70s Hollywood, this re-release of Bob Rafelson’s (Five Easy Pieces) drama confirms it as a minor-key marvel.

Markking the 100th anniversary of the British composer’s birth, this partly dramatised documentary does a sterling job of illuminating Britten’s music via his politics.

Joining Scandinavia's impressive array of crime thrillers is Daniel Espinosa’s Easy Money (aka Snabba Cash): the 2010 film that preceded the Swedish director’s US debut Safe House.

“Remember the second you go through those doors,” says Vin Diesel’s Dom Toretto. “Everything changes.” Now that’s wishful thinking. The Fast And The Furious films have never strayed too far from the formula, just doing enough tinkering under the hood...

When Henry James published What Maisie Knew in 1897, the idea of an innocent child being shuttled back and forth between spoiled divorced parents was a novel one. Today it's all too common. Maybe that's why Scott McGehee and David Siegel's depressing...

Baz Luhrmann may be the last guy in the world who needs to make a movie in 3-D. In previous films like Romeo + Juliet, Australia, and especially Moulin Rouge!, the whirling-dervish director has turned the screen into a mad circus of razzle-dazzle...

Baz Luhrmann’s 3-D ‘Great Gatsby’ maintains an odd emotional distance when it should be immersive.

On paper, Baz Luhrmann seems the perfect fit for bringing F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' to modern life. The man who put Romeo + Juliet in a gritty LA and burned Paris bright with neon in Moulin Rouge would have an edge up on the gaudy...

It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that I sat through Peeples wishing it were far more stupid, tasteless, and ridiculous than it is. In essence, the film is a cross between Meet the Parents and an Adam Sandler idiot-in-a-china-shop comedy.

Iron Man 3 is an ominously exciting, shoot-the-works comic-book spectacular. It keeps throwing things at you, but not with the random, busy franchise indifference that marked the hollow and grandiose Iron Man 2. Iron Man 3 is closer to a vision of the...

Small wonder his newest Gothic offering should have the feel of a trilogy-closer, though those expecting plasma by the bucketload may find their bloodlust frustratingly unsated.

From French filmmaker Francois Ozon, a story about the seductive power of storytelling.

Stories We Tell, the third feature directed by Sarah Polley (Away From Her), takes the proposition that reality is more dramatic than fiction and tests it out in a startlingly original, even head-spinning way.

Is no continent safe from the blood-drenched paws of filmmaker Eli Roth? Having let loose a flesh-eating virus on North America in Cabin Fever, established a European torture factory in the Hostel movies, and (as producer) wreaked havoc in Asia...

A knife-thrust of a film, Deadfall has the feel of Fargo with less laughs and more bloodshed.

An elderly man on a South African farm brandishing his metal walking stick and ranting “I’m going to put you in hospital” to director Jay Bulger.

A lot of young actors have wanted to play the cult rock idol Jeff Buckley, who died in 1997. Now one of them has, and quite remarkably. In Greetings From Tim Buckley, Penn Badgley saunters around with an air of spooky self-possession, and he...

The documentary is an insightful look into the remarkable rise of the tennis-playing Williams sisters.

As icy as Park Chan-Wook’s Stoker was tempestuous, this Russian black comedy won’t thaw out; no matter how many corpses the titular boilerman – elderly war hero turned gangland stooge (Mikhail Skryabin) – feeds into his furnace.

Baz Luhrmann believes in green lights—along with orgiastic parties, racing roadsters, and 3-D visuals that might pop even the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg. Moulin Rouge!’s fearless taste-destroyer may seem like a tacky fit for one of the undisputed...

What’s more obnoxious and overbearing than a Baz Luhrmann movie? A Baz Luhrmann movie in 3-D. When Warner Bros. announced that the release of Luhrmann’s movie of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel was being postponed from August 2012 to now, I wrote my...

Tyler Perry Presents Peeples is not a Tyler Perry movie. It has no schizoid tonal shifts and no speechifying. Its morality isn’t Victorian. Its sexual politics and gender roles aren’t regressive. It takes one of the central premises of Perry’s oeuvre...

Billionaire superhero Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) contends with two villains: a terrorist called The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) and an urbane think-tank tycoon (Guy Pearce), who may be working with the terrorist. Director and co-writer...

How bad is No One Lives, the new bottom-feeding schlock-fest from WWE Studios? Simply put: It’s bad enough to make some of the studio’s other offerings, like the Steve Austin deathmatch movie The Condemned and the Kane-starring slasher flick See...

Java Heat is an action movie for serious action movie buffs. Neither outrageous nor self-conscious, it looks and moves like any number of good late-’80s/early-’90s action flicks.