films

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Hollywood offers botched operations and altered lives in 2012

Change of plans
Those who got a thrill last spring when the SEALS took out Osama bin Laden will have more of the same covert ass-kicking to look forward to in theaters as we enter 2012.
By PETER KEOUGH | December 28, 2011

The best films of 2011 are not the ballyhooed

Also-rans
The films this year were kind of like the current field of Republican presidential candidates: some are entertaining, but there's no clear frontrunner, and there's more attention on the flashiest and least substantial than on the more thoughtful and genuine.
By PETER KEOUGH | December 21, 2011

Review: Shame

Fassbender is a winner in the Shame game
Director Steve McQueen has only made two films, but in them he explores two extremes of human experience.
By PETER KEOUGH | December 07, 2011

Review: Phase 7 [Fase 7]

Nicolás Goldbart's thriller
Phase 7 distinguishes itself by its suffocating setting, its low-affect tone, and its cast of flaky characters.
By PETER KEOUGH | July 12, 2011

Review: A Better Life

The illegal immigrants keeping LA afloat
A Better Life tells a tale of a father's love and his struggles to give his son the opportunities he never had.
By BRETT MICHEL | July 12, 2011

Review: The Women On the Sixth Floor

A comforting charmer
Philippe Le Guay's '60s-set Gallic Upstairs/Downstairs has all the requisite elements: easygoing political correctness, staid platitudes, saucy comedy, and a romance between a middle-aged bourgeois and a life-affirming babe 30 years his junior.
By PETER KEOUGH | June 28, 2011

Buñuel continues to delight, confound, and shock

Luis' world
Openly, contentedly delighted with how our own dreams can appall us, and how close movies are to that appalling dreaminess, Luis Buñuel — the subject of an extensive survey at the HFA this month — may have been the greatest filmmaker of the medium's first century.
By MICHAEL ATKINSON | June 16, 2011

Kathryn Bigelow introduces her retrospective at MoMA

Bin there, done that
For the first woman ever to be awarded the Best Director Oscar, and who most recently has set out to make a film about the biggest triumph in the war against terror, the killing of Osama bin Laden, Kathryn Bigelow certainly is humble.
By BRETT MICHEL | June 09, 2011

Review: L'amour Fou

Thoretton's portrait of the late Saint Laurent
Pierre Thoretton's lugubrious portrait of the late Yves Saint Laurent (he died in 2008) begins with a 2002 press conference in which the iconic designer announced his retirement from the world of fashion.
By PETER KEOUGH | May 26, 2011

Review: Legends of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen

A pastiche of genres
Fight sequences and jingoism propel Andrew Lau's period martial-arts melodrama, a formula that can be irresistible despite one's better judgment.
By PETER KEOUGH | May 19, 2011

Review: These Amazing Shadows

Addictive movie-centric documentary
If movies are our kiss-kiss-bang-bang arenas of desire, then this addictive movie-centric documentary from Paul Mariano and Kurt Norton makes the Library of Congress sound like the Playboy Mansion.
By BETSY SHERMAN | May 19, 2011

Review: Priest

Priests vs. vampires
Director Scott Stewart ( Legion ) helms this futuristic tale of a barren world under siege.
By PEG ALOI | May 19, 2011

Review: The Princess of Montpensier

Bertrand Tavernier's opulent period piece
Like all religious wars, the conflict between Catholics and Huguenots in 16th-century France made a mockery of spiritual values.
By PETER KEOUGH | May 19, 2011

Review: Forks Over Knives

Plenty of food for thought
If Food Inc. didn't scare you off red meat, Forks over Knives just might do the trick.
By TOM MEEK | May 12, 2011

Review: Prom

Squeaky-clean group portrait
A teen pic aimed at the tween demographic, Prom turns what could have been a string of punch lines and lump-in-the-throat passages into an affecting group portrait.
By BETSY SHERMAN | May 06, 2011

Review: Meek's Cutoff

Kelly Reichardt and Michelle Williams explore the frontier
Had Samuel Beckett made a Western, it might have resembled Kelly Reichardt's inscrutable tale, which is based on a real incident from the great Westward Migration.
By PETER KEOUGH | May 09, 2011

Review: Something Borrowed

A numbing pattern
In Luke Greenfield's adaptation of Emily Giffin's novel, Rachel (Ginnifer Goodwin) works hard, never complains, has brains but no self-esteem.
By PETER KEOUGH | May 04, 2011

Review: Tyler Perry's Madea's Big Happy Family

It's that time of year again, when the daffodils spring up and Tyler Perry puts on a dress and becomes Madea.
By TOM MEEK | April 27, 2011

Review: Water For Elephants

V ividness that was absent in print.
Francis Lawrence's screen adaptation of Sara Gruen's novel renders the Depression-era yarn about a traveling circus with a vividness that was absent in print.
By TOM MEEK | April 27, 2011

Review: Three

A feel-good ending
The 2011 Boston LGBT Film Festival kicks off with what amounts to a classy TV-movie from Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) in which fortysomething Berlin professional couple Hanna (Sophie Rois) and Simon (Sebastian Schipper), both feeling the 20-year itch, fall in love with the same man (Devid Striesow).
By JEFFREY GANTZ | April 27, 2011

Review: Carancho

Argentina's Official Selection as Best Foreign Language Film for the Academy Awards
Pablo Trapero's soggy, misguided, derivative melodrama was, somehow, Argentina's Official Selection as Best Foreign Language Film for the Academy Awards.
By GERALD PEARY | April 27, 2011

Review: Nine Nation Animation

Eclectic but masterful
The animated short is one of the most misunderstood genres in film.
By MICHAEL C. WALSH | April 13, 2011

Review: Atlas Shrugged

Not all books should be made into movies
Actor Paul Johansson, in his directorial debut, sets his adaptation of Ayn Rand's 1957 novel — now a Libertarian sacred text — in a near-future (2016) plagued by socialism.
By TOM MEEK | April 12, 2011

Review: Rio

A vibrant visual feast
Love drives this animated 3D flight of fancy from Carlos Saldanha, director of the Ice Age series and a native of the title city.
By TOM MEEK | April 12, 2011

More buried treasures from Boston Underground Film Festival

Deep thrills
Audiences have grown jaded as the thrills have gotten cheap, generic, and superficial. But the Boston Underground Film Festival, now in its 13th year, remains a reliable source for the kind of jolts to the system the medium was meant to provide.
By PETER KEOUGH | March 16, 2011

Reivew: Resident Evil: Afterlife

It's no Resident Evil 4 , but it'll do
Within the first 15 minutes of Resident Evil: Afterlife , an army of Milla Jovovich clones have ripped 500 bad guys to shreds and Tokyo has been reduced to a smoking crater. The action gets only more gonzo from there.
By SHAULA CLARK | September 16, 2010