Holiday Movie Preview: Ray Pride dissects this season’s new releases
Dour and dismal and downbeat and dark are a few of my favorite things… but this holiday season’s movies are ridiculously melancholy, not only the ones released during Christmas week, but the holdovers...
View ArticleReview: The Life Before Her Eyes
Vadim Perelman (“House of Sand and Fog”) directs Emil Stern’s adaptation of Laura Kasischke’s 2002 novel. One lovely April day, two high schoolers in the girls’ bathroom face a classmate on a shooting...
View ArticleReview: A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
RECOMMENDED Small, understated, but lovingly observed, Wayne Wang’s “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,” adapted by Yiyun Li from her own short story. Mr. Shi (Henry O) is a widower and retired...
View ArticleLord of the Ka-Ching: Peter Jackson rolls “The Lovely Bones” (review)
By Ray Pride There’s small, there’s large, there’s big, and then there’s overblown and overbearing. There’s the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, there’s “King Kong,” and now there’s Peter Jackson’s...
View ArticleReview: The Greatest
RECOMMENDED Since its Sundance 2009 debut, “The Greatest” has gotten flak from a flotilla of reviewers for its sometimes eccentric story structure and for its overt melodrama. But my first word was...
View ArticleReview: Solitary Man
RECOMMENDED Michael Douglas is back, with an unapologetically acerbic turn as an arrogant loser in “Solitary Man.” The 65-year-old actor’s career as a leading man has distinct stages. While known as...
View ArticleReview: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
RECOMMENDED In the song “Strange Overtones,” from David Byrne and Brian Eno’s 2008 album, “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today” Byrne croons, “This groove is out of fashion/ These beats are...
View ArticleReview: That’s My Boy
Adam Sandler does repeat business with the same prospectus for last year’s “Jack and Jill”: a hurting family heals by getting past disgust linked to class. In that sentimental comedy about estranged...
View ArticleReview: Robot and Frank
RECOMMENDED Goofy and sometimes downright odd, the oh-so-small “Robot and Frank” is mildly futuristic, not quite a drama, certainly not a comedy, but a decent showcase for the always-welcome empathetic...
View ArticleReview: Arbitrage
RECOMMENDED Sleek, silver, turning sixty, Robert Miller seems to be atop his world, a billionaire commanding the love of family and preparing to sell the family financial empire for a rare price in a...
View ArticleReview: The Company You Keep
RECOMMENDED Among the small, canny, intelligent things to admire about Robert Redford’s “The Company You Keep” is the absence of a cast list in the opening credits: it’s the most sweetly starry...
View ArticleReview: The Last of Robin Hood
“The Last Of Robin Hood,” directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland (“Quinceañera,” “The Fluffer”) is a genteel swatch of Todd Haynes-lite, appropriate considering that Haynes is one of the...
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