drama

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Good Theater wrestles with love and sin

Heartplay
There's only one major problem in the love between Adam (Rob Cameron), a sarcastic would-be teacher working in retail, and Luke (Joe Bearor), an aspiring young actor.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | February 01, 2012

Review: Luck

HBO goes to the races
You get the feeling that Milch and Mann just want to show off what they know about horse racing. When one of Marcus's crew keeps screaming out during the big Pick Six race, "What's going on!?," he speaking for the audience.
By JON GARELICK | January 24, 2012

Review: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

An extremely exploitative and incredibly bad tale
Too soon? For Stephen Daldry's 9/11 drama, the right time is "never."
By BRETT MICHEL | January 17, 2012

Review: Joyful Noise

Rafter-rocking gospel singing
There's not much joy but there's plenty of noise of the rafter-rocking gospel singing variety in Tony Graff's musical dramedy.
By TOM MEEK | January 10, 2012

Review: Answers to Nothing

Matthew Leutwyler's trite contraption
The baleful influence of Paul Haggis's multi-narrative Oscar-winner Crash (2004) continues with Matthew Leutwyler's trite contraption.
By PETER KEOUGH | November 29, 2011

Cambridge moves to Boston in Before I Leave You

Autumn garden
Fear of mortality is a domino in Before I Leave You, the play with which 72-year-old dramatist Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro, who has been flexing her inky fingers in Cambridge for 40 years, enters the big time.
By CAROLYN CLAY | November 02, 2011

Review: The Skin I Live In

A sensuous, sinister tale of a plastic surgeon
Pedro Almodóvar applies all his hypnotic control to a sensuous, sinister tale of a plastic surgeon who kidnaps a beautiful woman in order to shroud her in experimental skin.
By SHEILA JOHNSTON | October 25, 2011

Review: Puncture

Facing down fat cats
Though drawn from a true story, Adam and Mark Kassen's drama falls into the pattern of films like The Verdict in which a crapulous barrister gets a second chance by taking on a case of David-versus-Goliath injustice.
By PETER KEOUGH | October 18, 2011

Review: Weekend

Gay-themed drama
This appealing gay-themed drama, written and directed with intelligence by Andrew Haigh, is a British cousin to the American mumblecore movement, as two twentysomething guys meet, have sex, talk, have more sex, have much more chat, and get closer and closer over a long weekend.
By GERALD PEARY | October 11, 2011

Review: Littlerock

Altogether original
Two young Japanese tourists, siblings Rintaro (Rintaro Sawamoto) and Atsuko (Atsuko Okatsuka), get stranded when their car breaks down in the California backwater of the title.
By PETER KEOUGH | October 05, 2011

Review: Machine Gun Preacher

White-savior storyline
Jesus does funny things to people: one day you're sitting on a toilet shooting heroin; the next you're building an orphanage in war-torn southern Sudan.
By ANN LEWINSON | September 27, 2011

Review: Girlfriend

Concerned only with the truth
One night Evan's mother (Amanda Plummer) asks him to make a wish. He says he wants a girlfriend, and his wish comes true, but at a cost.
By PETER KEOUGH | September 27, 2011

Review: Restless

Death-obsessed teens in love
Gus Van Sant's Restless follows a similar template to Jonathan Levin's 50/50 , with more precious results.
By PETER KEOUGH | September 27, 2011

Review: 50/50

An edgy concept, and a fine cast
In 50/50 , Jonathan Levine, whose The Wackness (2008) showed a talent for sardonic comedy, makes a halfhearted attempt to raise Will Reiser's script (partly autobiographical) above clever stereotype.
By PETER KEOUGH | September 27, 2011

Interview: Jonah Hill straightens up

Money man
The Superbad star has embraced his inner math geek for his role in Moneyball , the film adaptation of Michael Lewis's best-selling book.
By SEAN KERRIGAN | September 20, 2011

Is Boardwalk Empire about to enter its golden age?

Easy livin'
Dispel any remaining doubts. The new season (which begins this Sunday at 9 pm on HBO) unfolds with a new leisurely, cinematic grandeur.
By JON GARELICK | September 21, 2011

Review: Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame

Exhilarating action
The latest action epic from Hong Kong new wave director Tsui Hark ( Once Upon a Time in China ) is a fact-based historical drama set in 689 AD, a period when "all hell was about to break loose," according to the dense narration that opens the film.
By BRETT MICHEL | September 20, 2011

Review: Happy, Happy

A familiar tale of adultery
First time filmmaker Anne Sewitsky finds a compassionate way to tell a familiar tale of adultery, and she's helped immeasurably by a first-rate acting ensemble, especially the two superlative actresses, whom you could imagine cast in films of the late Ingmar Bergman.
By GERALD PEARY | September 20, 2011

Review: My Afternoons with Margueritte

Twisting the "lonely child, clean old man" formula
European cinema doesn't have as many sure-fire formulas as Hollywood, but the one described, I think, by Pauline Kael as the "lonely child, clean old man" scenario has long endured.
By PETER KEOUGH | September 20, 2011

Review: Straw Dogs

Rod Lurie's new version of the Peckinpah classic
Remaking, polishing, and in effect housebreaking what should've remained untamed and feral, Rod Lurie's new version of the Peckinpah classic follows the original's story beats closely, and so the devil is in the details.
By MICHAEL ATKINSON | September 20, 2011

Review: A Dolphin Tale

Not much of a splash
Winter the dolphin gamely plays herself in this loose re-telling of her fight for survival after a crab trap mangles her tail.
By ALICIA POTTER | September 20, 2011

Review: Ringer

Sarah Michelle Gellar is her own vehicle
Sixty seconds into the CW's new psychological thriller Ringer, star Sarah Michelle Gellar is seen running from a masked attacker in the darkness.
By SHARON STEEL | September 08, 2011

Review: The Debt

John Madden's smart, icy thriller
Based on the 2007 Israeli film Ha-Hov, the story weaves present and past together, with most of the action surrounding the fateful mission and the perilous web of duty, passion, and betrayal that still haunts the agents.
By PEG ALOI | August 30, 2011

Review: Aurora

Deepening the mystery
Long after such an insight might do any good, Viorel, the mopey, truculent antihero of this second film in Cristi Puiu's "Six Stories from the Outskirts of Bucharest" observes that the justice system does not comprehend the complexity of his relationship to his wife.
By PETER KEOUGH | August 23, 2011

Review: Griff the Invisible

Downtrodden superheroes
Like Kick-Ass and Super , Leon Ford's Griff the Invisible reaffirms the notion that superheroes exist to provide the meek and marginalized with an empowering fantasy.
By PETER KEOUGH | August 23, 2011

Review: Point Blank

Diminishing returns
Samuel (Gilles Lellouche), a student nurse, gets sucked into a quagmire of murder and corruption when a thug kidnaps his pregnant wife, Nadia (Elena Anaya), to blackmail him into springing Hugo (Roschdy Zem), a wounded prisoner held by the police at the hospital where he works.
By PETER KEOUGH | August 09, 2011

Reimagining Porgy and Bess

The A.R.T. takes on the Gershwins' classic and prep it for Broadway
In the new production at the American Repertory Theater, directed by Diane Paulus, Messrs. Heyward and Gershwin have been reworked by two actual African-Americans: two-time Obie Award winner Diedre L. Murray and Suzan-Lori Parks, the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize.
By EUGENIA WILLIAMSON | August 12, 2011

Review: The Future

Miranda July's shaggy kitten story
First of all let me confess that I'm a sucker for a cute, sad little kitten, especially one with a bum leg; like little Paw Paw, a miserable shelter stray with renal problems and a tiny cast, whom I found the most appealing character for much of Miranda July's odd, affecting movie.
By PETER KEOUGH | August 04, 2011

Review: Friends with Benefits

Chemistry and comic timing
FWB is a well-crafted comedy of the sex-first, romance-later genre that — bonus! — isn't blatantly nonsensical.
By BETSY SHERMAN | July 26, 2011