It’s astonishing how little crazy one needs to bring to a movie at the moment to make it leap out as fresh and distinctive. Read more>>

And now we learn the secret of that dreadful Clash of the Titans movie from a coupla years back. Its incoherence? Its soullessness? All by design. Read more>>

Filmmaker Julia Haslett was so moved by a quote of Simone Weil’s that she spent the next six years studying the French philosopher and making a film about her life and writings. Read more>>

How well does this movie accomplish what it sets out to do? That’s the primary question that propels my writing each review. In cinematically adapting the first of Suzanne Collins’s young adult novels, the answer is superbly. Read more

Every once in a while, just as I’m about to succumb to Hollywood-stoked despair and ennui, a movie like this comes along to rescue me… Read more>>

Joseph Cedar’s comedy about father and son Talmud scholars has so many loose threads you could take it in for shatnez testing. Read more>>

American filmmaker Joshua Marston’s anthropological storytelling presents characters and cultures alien to his audiences’ eyes in ways that render them instantly and easily recognizable and sympathetic… Read more>>

It’s a good thing Mark Wahlberg is so effortlessly charming: he keeps this rather generic heist thriller rolling along as smoothly as it does. Read more>>

Hoorah! I have another exhibit to point to when I am accused of being unfairly and irretrievably prejudiced against a movie before I even see it… Read more>>

Social commentary makes relevant filmmaking, as evidenced by perceptive writer/director/producer Jennifer Westfeldt, who reveals how parenthood defines character in this witty, contemporary romantic comedy. Read more