Movie Reviews

Current films are reviewed each week to provide parents a guide to decide what may be appropriate to younger viewers.

Quentin Tarantino, you have gone too far.

Movie stars often are applauded as risk-takers for singing in musicals. Truth is, they get a lot of breaks.

The family-friendliest movie comedy this holiday season is also the sappiest and schmaltziest.

'Chasing Ice" aims to accomplish, with pictures, what all the hot air that's been generated on the subject of global warming hasn't been able to do: Make a difference.

Cirque du Soleil movies are a lot like ballet films – long on beauty and artistry, short on story.

Stupid freaking Judd Apatow, with his stupid freaking foulmouthed and sentimental "Hobbit"-length comedies, his stupid freaking insistence on peopling them with his old comic cronies, his wife and his cursing kids.

Peering into famous bedrooms is a pastime of biographers and filmmakers alike, and this season offers several opportunities for the nosily inclined. Alfred Hitchcock, as well as Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, have recently received the keyhole treatment; even Abraham Lincoln helps loosen Mary's corset in the otherwise buttoned-up "Lincoln."

Whatever you think of Tom Cruise, you know he's not 6-foot-5 and well over 200 pounds, which is the way author Lee Child describes his crime-solving, justice- dispensing ex-military policeman, Jack Reacher. But even if Cruise isn't as physically imposing as the guy, he can still bring the intimidation, as he proves in "Jack Reacher."

Current films are reviewed each week to provide parents a guide to decide what may be appropriate to younger viewers.

For their latest comic trick, Barbra Streisand and Seth Rogen go for something that neither has been known for over the course of their respective careers – cute. With "Guilt Trip," they've made a holiday comedy safer for Streisand's audience than for Rogen's, a mild-mannered movie you won't be embarrassed to take your mom to.

The first hour of the ultimately satisfying "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" is purely setup.

The man who made "Psycho" was no lightweight, though he kind of comes off that way in "Hitchcock."

'Somewhere Between" is an apt description of where the subjects of this moving new documentary find themselves: Chinese girls emotionally divided between the Asian country in which they were born and the America in which they were raised.

A quietly brilliant study in cognitive dissonance, "The Flat" is a documentary look at Holocaust denial, but not the kind you might think.

This is supposed to be the time of year when high-quality movies come out, whether they're potential Oscar contenders or crowd-pleasing family fare.

"Killing Them Softly" draws a parallel between the world of street thugs and hit men and that of bankers and financiers, with a story about a crisis of confidence in a small gambling market in the fall of 2008.

There's a bad movie every week, but it takes a special one to make you start thinking about the decline of Western civilization.

To watch Peter Nicks' "The Waiting Room" is to wish it would never end. This is important to say at the outset, because any description of this documentary, about a day in the life of a hospital waiting room, might make it sound like a sermon or a dish of plain spinach. Oh, no. This is human drama at its most intense and universal. This is the rare film that can change the way you think and see the world.

Current films are reviewed each week to provide parents a guide to decide what may be appropriate to younger viewers.

The new "Anna Karenina" is as regal, romantic and tragic as ever. The Tolstoy tale of a bored wife and doting mother martyred by her scandalous love for a rakish cavalry officer in Imperial Russia is a perfect period vehicle for Keira Knightley, who always brings a chest-heaving sexuality to such pieces – even the understated romances of Jane Austen.

Current films are reviewed each week to provide parents a guide to decide what may be appropriate to younger viewers.

In the late 18th century, as America was on the cusp of revolting to free itself from the tyranny of arbitrary rule by people born to the privilege and laws, medicine and freedoms constrained by religious superstition, Europe was – state by state – wrestling with many of the same issues.

Watching the amazing "Life of Pi," one often wonders "How are they doing that?"

'Silver Linings Playbook' is rich in life's complications. It will make you laugh, but don't expect it to fit in any snug genre pigeonhole. Dramatic, emotional, as well as wickedly funny, it has the gift of going its own way, a complete success from a singular talent.

'Rise of the Guardians" is both family film and exposé, pulling back the curtain on our favorite holiday symbols. Most shocking truths: Santa Claus looks like he spends more time at the gym than in the toy factory, and the tooth fairy has been outsourcing her work.

'Red Dawn' is a lot funnier than you remember.

Finally – finally! – the "Twilight" franchise embraces its own innate absurdity with the gleefully over-the-top conclusion, "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2."

The documentary "Samsara" is a ravishing visual experience, but it carries a message that at least some viewers will find less than compelling. It's not a message conveyed in words – the film has no dialogue or narration – but it comes through loud and clear.

You need not think about how to feel while watching "Lincoln," Steven Spielberg's well-acted but heavy-handed take on a pivotal moment in U.S. history.

Four sedate, super-civilized musicians are thrown into a pressure cooker in "A Late Quartet," a drama whose measured veneer gives way to memorable and explosive moments.

In "The Details," Dr. Jeff Lang (Tobey Maguire) lives in a charming suburban Seattle home with his beautiful wife, Nealy (Elizabeth Banks), and their adorable 2-year-old son.

Current films are reviewed each week to provide parents a guide to decide what may be appropriate to younger viewers.

At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I would like to nominate John Hawkes and Helen Hunt in "The Sessions" as the movie couple of the year. Their extraordinary connection while re-enacting the true story of a disabled, virginal 38-year-old writer and his sexual surrogate infuses the movie, written and directed by Ben Lewin, with a piercing depth of humanity and no small amount of humor.

Switched-at-birth stories are always heartbreaking, the parents who discover years later that the child they loved and raised is not their own, the child whose identity is upended.

Fiftieth birthdays often are associated with sports cars, younger women and daredevil pursuits.

The act of going out there as an unknown and coming back a star is the time-honored showbiz fantasy, and if there's any justice that is about to come true for Mary Elizabeth Winstead on the basis of "Smashed."

British filmmaker Andrea Arnold's "Wuthering Heights," the newest chapter in the novel's long on-screen history, is so earthy and intent on authenticity that, like Heathcliff and Cathy, you can never escape the wind that howls across the moors, or the mud, clinging so thick on boots and body that it's tempting to check your own. Even the actors, many plucked from the Yorkshire countryside where the Emily Bronte classic is set and the movie was shot, have faces worn by that harsh clime to match the complicated emotions the author explored.

While you're watching the dizzily enjoyable documentary "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel," opening at the Tower today, you may find yourself thinking with an increasing fervor that, yes, wearing violet velvet mittens with everything is a fantastic idea, and that you're just mad about rouge.

Just in time for the holiday travel season, "Flight" brings audiences perhaps the most harrowing scenes of a troubled airplane ever committed to film.

The best eras of animation occur when filmmakers are encouraged to follow their muse. Think of how many different ways a shortsighted modern studio head might shoot down "Fantasia" or "Wall-E" if given the chance.

"Chasing Mavericks" breaks through the clichés associated with surfer movies – the carefree beach party fantasies, the fake mysticism – and offers a portrait that has a lot more integrity.

It's amazing that young people can even get auto insurance in the cinematic world of teen comedies.

There is something new going on in 21st century movies, a strain of films attempting to convey the entire experience of life in a single movie.

Current films are reviewed each week to provide parents a guide to decide what may be appropriate to younger viewers.

In 2007, Iranian-born graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi made a splash with "Persepolis," her wildly inventive animated memoir of growing up and getting out of her troubled home country. "Chicken With Plums," finds Satrapi directing once again with Vincent Paronnaud.

When ACTUP, or the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, staged its first protests in New York in 1987, the disease was in its sixth year and most people who contracted HIV had died, and died quickly.

James Patterson titled his 12th Alex Cross crime novel simply "Cross." The filmmakers who adapted it expanded the title to "Alex Cross."

Mockumentary filmmakers Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman ("Catfish") know a thing or two about misdirecting an audience, as they proved again with 2011's "Paranormal Activity 3."

Current films are reviewed each week to provide parents a guide to decide what may be appropriate to younger viewers.