Many people questioned acclaimed director Martin Scorsese choosing to helm a pure genre film in the psychological thriller “Shutter Island,” but the marriage of one of the masters of crime drama and a Dennis Lehane (“Mystic River,” “Gone Baby Gone”) novel is as close to an ideal match as it sounds. Although Scorsese is capable [...]

There’s no denying that “Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire” is a tough film. The harrowing story of an overweight illiterate 16-year-old girl pregnant by her father for the second time and living with her abusive mother is not the fare most of us go to the theaters for. But sometimes we need [...]

You won’t find a more visually immaculate film than “A Single Man.” Gucci frontman Tom Ford’s film debut is something out of an inch-thick fashion magazine. His eye for beauty and sensuality might be unparalleled in Hollywood with just this one entry. Applied to the story of a man torn apart inside with the loss [...]

Everybody’s talking about what happens after the apocalypse these days. “The Book of Eli” is sort of the boiling point of this science-fiction concept, a combination of last year’s “The Road” and George Miller’s “The Road Warrior.” America is a post-apocalyptic wasteland and Denzel Washington is the only self-sufficient badass. So originality is not exactly [...]

Before you ever see the first shot of “Youth in Revolt,” you know what’s going on. A repetitive motion sound can be heard as well as the flipping of pages. Nick Twisp (Cera) is masturbating and almost everyone in the theater knows it. That’s testament to how far the R-rated comedy sexual revolution has come [...]

Sometimes all it takes to make a movie is a good story with a director and a cast capable of seeing it for what it is. “The Blind Side” is an excellent example of why our interest continues to peak at the tagline “based on a true story” in movie trailers. You get the sense [...]

The grandfather of the mystery genre — and film’s most adapted character — is none other than the great detective Sherlock Holmes, so if one were to apply Holmes’ own deductive reasoning skills, a modern reinvention was a matter of time. English Director Guy Ritchie (“Snatch,” “RocknRolla”) applies his witty and gritty crime thriller style [...]

James Cameron is a storied director whose films have been landmarks of their time. Like he did in the ’80s and ’90s with both Terminator films, he returns from his 10-year hiatus without missing a beat, shepherding audiences into the future of cinema with progressive film-making done with the most advanced technology. “Avatar” is a [...]

Jason Reitman has been the creative force behind two of the warmest, funniest, modern- savvy and thought-provoking comedies in the last five years (“Thank You For Smoking” and “Juno”). He continues this tradition with “Up in the Air,” one of if not the best film of 2009, which looks at life with a view from [...]

I think there’s actually a proverb somewhere that says “On one of three things a film contends for Oscars: Clint Eastwood directing, Morgan Freeman acting and a compelling historical figure as the lead role.” The person who first uttered this saying would take one look at “Invictus” and say: “well that’s not fair.” But despite [...]

In a decade where CGI has dominated all animated forms of entertainment and a year where 3D has exploded into prime time, Walt Disney Studios steps back, reaches into its old bag of tricks and pulls out its first hand-drawn feature in five years. The decision might feel like a ploy to boost Disney merchandising [...]

The challenges awaiting Joe Penhall and John Hillcoat in adapting and directing (respectively) Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” had to be numerous. This post-apocalyptic father-and-son story about whether struggling to survive as long as possible is worth the pain is a bleak tale and one that grinds along much of the time. It doesn’t have more [...]

All families are different and maybe that’s the hardest thing to keep in mind when watching tension mount and drama unfold in Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz’s “Shiva.” We mourn and handle loss both personally and collectively in different ways and even if we think we wouldn’t ever let underlying issues between family members come out [...]

The Coen brothers have developed critical acclaim for making black comedies/awkward tragedies that depict small-time people getting in way over their heads, who for one reason or another are motivated to do things out of the ordinary because the natural order of the world and society has wronged them in some way. “A Serious Man,” [...]

Spike Jonze’s imagining of “Where the Wild Things Are” is nothing like you’d expect from a film adapted from a beloved children’s book. It’s dense with top-notch visuals from the cinematography to the incredible fusion of costumes, puppetry and CGI used to bring the Wild Things to life, but its plot is very frank in [...]