Movies

Spencer McCall’s bewildering The Institute

Life is elsewhere
Ostensibly, the first feature film by Spencer McCall seeks to provide a portrait of a San Francisco organization called the Jejune Institute, whose mission hovers somewhere between the poles of self-help, performance art, disinformation, and an alternate-reality game. But if this is a portrait, we're not in art class anymore.

By: NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | May 10, 2013

Shane Carruth’s rapturous Upstream Color

Regaining Senses
One of the many triumphs of Shane Carruth's second film, Upstream Color , is that it demands to be heard as well as read.

By: CHRISTOPHER GRAY | April 24, 2013

Review: Girl Model

The sad world of teenage exploitation
The opening shot of Girl Model, the 2011 documentary exposing the exploitative modeling industry in Russia and Japan, scans a gray and cold Siberian cityscape.

By: DEIRDRE FULTON | March 13, 2013

Review: Emperor

Yes, Tommy Lee Jones plays the "supreme commander" of the US forces in this historical drama from Peter Webber ( Girl with a Pearl Earring ) that takes place after the Japanese surrender in World War II, and the Oscar winner puts in another towering performance.

By: BRETT MICHEL | March 12, 2013

Review: Oz the Great and Powerful

Sam Raimi nearly overcomes the unenviable burden of revisiting a classic by delivering dazzling footage, but not so the performances.

By: JORDAN RIEFE | March 07, 2013

Review: 21 And Over

As one of the Asian stereotypes in this hit-or-(mostly)-miss comedy from writer/directors Jon Lucas and Scott Moore says, "Fuck kids these days. Every one of you is drunk, stupid, and fat."

By: BRETT MICHEL | March 05, 2013

Review: The Last Exorcism Part II

Now that the shaky-cam nonsense has been left behind, what remains are textureless, overlit, sub-TV-quality visuals that only accentuate the fact that our protagonist, Nell Sweetzer (Ashley Bell), is at least a decade older than the 17-year-old exorcised sect-escapee that she's playing.

By: BRETT MICHEL | March 06, 2013

Review: Jack The Giant Slayer

Stop me if you've heard this one before: a farm boy dreams of adventure, finds it, and falls in love with a princess along the way. (For everyone's sake, let's just hope she's not his sister.)

By: BRETT MICHEL | March 06, 2013

Review: Dead Man Down

Following the stunning success of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo , Danish filmmaker Niels Arden Oplev makes his English-language bow with this bleak film noir that values character over tension.

By: JORDAN RIEFE | March 08, 2013

Review: Holy Motors

By: PETER KEOUGH | March 05, 2013

Review: Phantom

Simultaneously bizarre and banal, director Todd Robinson's military procedural seems designed to please no one.

By: JAKE MULLIGAN | February 27, 2013

Review: Snitch

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson idles through this Ric Roman Waugh–directed action thriller as John Matthews, a construction company owner who infiltrates a cartel to persuade the DEA to set free his wrongly imprisoned son.

By: SCOTT SUGARMAN | February 27, 2013

Review: The Sweeney

No single subgenre is as tired as "loose-cannon cop breaks the rules to bring down a band of ruthless criminals."

By: JAKE MULLIGAN | February 27, 2013

The Oscars: Argo's golden fleece

The situation may reshuffle by the Oscar broadcast on February 24, but I doubt it. After being snubbed in the Best Director category, Argo has won every award since.

By: PETER KEOUGH | February 22, 2013

Review: Identity Thief

Seth Gordon directs this funny, though formulaic, mismatched-duo comedy in which Jason Bateman's straight-laced family man must nab Melissa McCarthy, the identity thief who has ruined his credit, and haul her from Florida to Denver for prosecution.

By: BETSY SHERMAN | February 20, 2013

Review: Safe Haven

Somewhere along the way Nicholas Sparks went from being just a bestselling author of preachy schmaltz to a full-on franchise (he produces the movies of his books).

By: TOM MEEK | February 14, 2013

Review: A Good Day To Die Hard

A Good Day To Die Hard is a movie for people who like blowin' stuff up, evidently a favorite pastime of director John Moore, whose action scenes make about as much sense as his script, which was likely written on a cocktail napkin.

By: JORDAN RIEFE | February 15, 2013

Review: Beautiful Creatures

Mis spelled
Throughout his adaptation of Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl's YA novel, Richard Lagravenese drops the names of books that would have provided a more rewarding way of spending a couple of hours than watching this movie.

By: PETER KEOUGH | February 11, 2013

Documentary shows America’s system is far from neat

Health care on the rocks
Toward the end of 2012, the US Census Bureau reported that for the first time in years, the number of uninsured Americans had actually fallen — to 48.6 million, from an all-time high of 49.9 million in 2010.

By: DEIRDRE FULTON | February 06, 2013

Review: Bullet To The Head

Veteran director Walter Hill's return to the screen looks, sounds, and feels like an '80s action movie beefed-up for modern audiences with heaping helpings of messy blood squibs.

By: MONICA CASTILLO | February 05, 2013