Bella Complains Edward “Won’t Unzip Before Marriage” Read more>>

In Madeleine Sackler’s affecting new documentary, The Lottery, the 27-year-old intended to create a cinema verite view of the families of four children who entered a lottery for 475 coveted spots at the Harlem Success Academy, a publicly funded charter school in NYC. But timing is every thing. Read more>>

1. Up in the Air
2. The Hurt Locker
3. Star Trek
4. The Hangover
5. The Young Victoria
6. District 9
7. Coco Before Chanel
8. Inglourious Basterds
9. Paranormal Activity
10. Up
And, for the annotated version, with honorable mentions: Read the rest of this entry »

Coraline's Button-eyed Other Mother

It’s a cliche that mothers die at the beginnings of children’s movies. Bambi’s mom passed. The Hunchback’s mom? Gone.

But Coraline has a very different take on motherhood. This spunky pre-teen heroine’s mother is — eek! — a self-obsessed writer who works from home on her computer and leaves the cooking to dad, who concocts some kind of sticky unappetizing slop. Is it any wonder that Coraline is ripe for seduction by her “other mother?” Read the rest of this entry »

Kate Williams, the Australian-born editor frequently associated with Steve Buscemi (Trees Lounge, Interview, Animal Factory) came to Frozen River — first-time feature writer-director Courtney Hunt’s gripping upstate NY drama starring Melissa Leo and Misty Upham — once it was in the can. Read the rest of this entry »

Call Sea World: Sex and the City has jumped the shark. Since the HBO series exited with tears and orgasms in 2004, we’ve all moved on even if Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte haven’t. Read more>>

Given the big wind-up of his festival-opening speech, Robert Redford’s self-congratulatory yet vague notion of change (we all know what it means, don’t make us spell it out), should have been exemplified by the subsequent screening of festival-opener, “In Bruges,” presumably Exhibit A of his agenda. Read more>>

With “Babel” shaping up to be this year’s “Crash” at the Oscars, after acing the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture/Drama, there’s something my inner common sensical American mom (as opposed to the film critic) must address. The global thriller’s extreme tension hinges on characters making radically dumb decisions, one after the next, in America and abroad. more

AWFJ member Thelma Adams sniffs hypocrisy in the making of “Perfume: The Story of A Murderer,” the historical serial killer movie set in 18th century France. As Adams comments on the Huffington Post, director Tom Tykwer starts out “reaching for Steven Spielberg battleground realism” in the film “whopping gag-inducer” opening which visually captures the fetid environment of Paris’ fish market, but presents images of the killer’s female victims– “bulemic, small-busted beauties, all lit like angels”– as thought they belonged on the pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. Read the rest of this entry »