Movie Stars

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Review: The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Blood simpletons: Eclipse needs a transfusion
No matter how many books she sells, no matter how many billions the movies make, no matter what significance her huge success has for the future of Western culture, there's no excuse for Stephenie Meyer's terrible writing.
By PETER KEOUGH | July 02, 2010

Review: The Killer Inside Me

A killer with nothing inside him
Jim Thompson might be the darkest of noir writers, but Michael Winterbottom's version of Thompson's 1952 novel reduces its mirthful nihilism to lurid unpleasantness.
By PETER KEOUGH | June 30, 2010

Review: Love Ranch

"There's no business like ho business!"'
A worthwhile tale might lurk somewhere in Taylor Hackford's latest, but this flaccid look at the early days of Reno's legalized bordello business takes a fictionalized approach to history rather than the more fact-based strategy that enriched Hackford's Ray .
By BRETT MICHEL | June 30, 2010

Review: Grown Ups

Puerile adult humor ensues
For a scant idea involving a potpourri of SNL alums, Grown Up s is a lot funnier than it should be.
By TOM MEEK | June 24, 2010

Review: Jonah Hex

Disfigured antihero shacks up with a prostitute
Think Will Smith’s Wild Wild West killed the Western?
By BRETT MICHEL | June 24, 2010

Review: Knight and Day

Cruise's creepiness only adds to the role
With a mischievous grin, Roy Miller (Tom Cruise) gazes into the distrusting eyes of June Havens (Cameron Diaz), who’s spent the last 18 hours drugged unconscious, and explains why she’s not wearing her clothes.
By BRETT MICHEL | June 24, 2010

Cinema paradisos

As Hollywood's summer fare goes cold, local film festivals heat up
Here's the dilemma: you love movies, but you also love the idea of taking a vacation to one of the many inviting resorts that New England has to offer — the beaches of Cape Cod or the Islands, picturesque towns in Maine or Rhode Island, or even the cultural and historical enclaves of Boston itself.
By PETER KEOUGH | June 16, 2010

Tilda Swinton's mixed metamorphoses

Indie-cinema luminary gets retrospective in P-Town
Most people know Tilda Swinton either from her role as the White Witch in the Narnia movies or as the striking-looking woman who in her speech accepting the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance in Michael Clayton said she was going to give the trophy to her agent. Or perhaps as the actress whom Conan O'Brian said he would like to portray him if there's ever an HBO movie made about his life.
By PETER KEOUGH | June 21, 2010

Review: Killers

Did we ask to see Ashton Kutcher as 007?
As a CIA operative in Robert Luketic's spy thriller/rom-com, Ashton Kutcher looks strapping, if nothing else.
By TOM MEEK | June 09, 2010

Review: The Karate Kid (2010)

Shouldn't it be "The Kung Fu Kid"?
What happens when Will Smith wants a franchise for his boy.
By BRETT MICHEL | June 11, 2010

Review: Solitary Man

Let's just move on
By the fourth time Michael Douglas wakes up hungover and shirtless on a sour double bed, we get it: he's old.
By PETER KEOUGH | June 09, 2010

Game Changer

After decades of lackluster releases, the video-game-turned-film genre may have finally found its royalty
For the worse part of two decades, Hollywood has been trying to discover the formula for successfully adapting video games to the big screen.
By BRETT MICHEL | June 04, 2010

Shake Your Booty for a Bounty

Dance for Your Supper Dept.
Like in other businesses, family connections are important in filmmaking. Just ask Kate Hudson and Michael Douglas.
By TOM MEEK | June 02, 2010

The garden of Vittorio De Sica

Mostly high points at the Harvard Film Archive
Vittorio De Sica, the subject of a major retrospective at the Harvard Film Archive, "Vittorio De Sica — Neo-Realism, Melodrama, Fantasy," was a movie star in Italy before he became a filmmaker.
By STEVE VINEBERG | June 02, 2010

Crossword: ''Smoothie Mix''

Add these acts together and blend
Add these acts together and blend
By MATT JONES | June 03, 2010

Today’s Chevy

Fletch is a midsize star vehicle
Already this summer we’ve seen Richard Pryor and Sylvester Stallone turn up in tailor-made celluloid, and now here’s Chevy Chase in a fashionable conveyance of his own.
By HENRY SHEEHAN | June 04, 2010

Stockholm syndrome

Stieg Larsson’s Girl is stinging Swedish noir
With its low crime rate and socialized everything, Sweden doesn’t seem very noirish compared with, say, LA. Then again, much of the country spends the entire winter without sunlight.
By PETER KEOUGH | May 26, 2010

Living the dream

De Niro Pops Off Dept.
Movie stars aren’t the usual Symphony Hall crowd, but last week, two dark-suited ushers swung open the doors of the Hatch Room and out poured Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, and Cherry Jones.
By LLOYD SCWARTZ | May 26, 2010

Sweaty Palmes

The Cannes 2010 jury picks some winners, but some head-scratchers, too
Apichatpong Weerasethakul must have done something right in one or more of his previous incarnations.
By LISA NESSELSON | May 28, 2010

Four to watch for

From Cannes to the multiplex
These Cannes-debuting films will soon be appearing in your local neighborhood googleplex.
By LISA NESSELSON | May 26, 2010

Review: Shrek Forever After

Far, Far Away meets It’s a Wonderful Life .
For his fourth outing, Shrek has entered a midlife crisis.
By BRETT MICHEL | May 21, 2010

Photos: Robert DeNiro, Morgan Freeman, and more with the Boston Pops

The Dream Lives On: A Portrait of the Kennedy Brothers , Symphony Hall, until June 20
The Pops pays tribute to John, Robert, and Edward Kennedy by combining quotes from their speeches with original text and video, accompanied by a dramatic orchestral and choral score.
By BOSTON POPS | May 21, 2010

Review: Mother And Child

Working through cinematic mother issues
Elizabeth is a city-hopping attorney with plenty of career drive and no attachments — she treats her lovers with black-widow disdain.
By TOM MEEK | May 12, 2010

Review: Robin Hood (2010)

The more the merrier? Hardly.
“And so the legend begins . . . ”
By PETER KEOUGH | May 14, 2010

Review: Please Give

Nicole Holofcener’s sweet charity
Well, I’ve got my first candidate for Best Supporting Actress for 2010: Ann Morgan Guilbert, who plays Andra, the 90-year-old obstacle to the happiness of a disparate group of Manhattanites who range from the utterly selfish to the overly selfless.
By PETER KEOUGH | May 04, 2010

Review: Iron Man 2

Stark alternatives
Maybe I’m just relieved that it wasn’t in 3-D, or maybe actor Justin Theroux (frequent David Lynch collaborator and co-scripter of Tropic Thunder ) is just a better writer than the law firm of scribes that pasted together the original, but Jon Favreau’s sequel to his creaky adaptation of the rusty Marvel standby Iron Man restores my lack of faith in superheroes.
By PETER KEOUGH | February 24, 2011

Review: Death at a Funeral

Farce in the age of Obama
Once the enfant terrible of misogynistic movies (see 1997’s In the Company of Men ), Neil LaBute has moved on to remakes. His take on a 1973 horror classic ( The Wicker Man ) is either classically horrible or classically brilliant.
By BRETT MICHEL | April 21, 2010

Review: Saturday Night

Franco's debut documentary possibly better than an actual episode of Saturday Night Live
Actor James Franco’s debut feature, a behind-the-scenes look at the December 6, 2008, episode of Saturday Night Live , is kind of like Jean-Luc Godard’s Sympathy for the Devil with less music and more fart jokes.
By PETER KEOUGH | April 21, 2010

Interview: Dakota Fanning

Runaway talent
Dakota Fanning may be just 16 years old, but already she’s built a body of work that shames some starlets twice her age.
By BRETT MICHEL | April 13, 2010

Review: Kick-Ass

It’s Chloë Grace Moretz who kicks ass
It’s the greatest introduction of a movie character in at least 10 years, the moment when Hit-Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) makes the scene.
By PETER KEOUGH | April 14, 2010