Screen
Savage deception, revealed
Amir Bar- Lev’s previous documentary, My Kid Could Paint That, questioned the authorship of a little girl’s unusually sophisticated and lucrative canvases, and the role her father may have played in their creation. It was a detective story as well as a highly ...
The black market meets the stock market
Killing Them Softly is an ambitious mashup of black market and stock market politics, wrapped in the guise of a straight-up crime movie. If that sounds like it’d be hard to pull off, it is. If you think it’s too much for one film, you’re right. Killing Them Softly ...
Up and Downey
Although traditionally necessary for filmmaking, the original Iron Man was rumored not to have had much of a real script, just an outline of key moments and the note “fill in gaps with Robert Downey Jr.’s swag.” Much to the chagrin of the Writers Guild of America, it...
Training in 3-D
How to Train Your Dragon, the latest film from Dreamworks Animation, tells the story of Hiccup ( Jay Baruchel), a young Viking and the only son of village chief, blacksmith and single dad Stoick The Vast (Gerard Butler). Hiccup is attracted to Astrid (America ...
Freebie fraught with failure
Up until their remake of The Heartbreak Kid, two of the unfunniest hours ever, Peter and Bobby Farrelly could be counted on to provide a few fine rude laughs even when their films wobbled...
Les swing and les miss
Two minutes in: You can do this, Ryan. Sure, a three-hour film version of a Broadway musical is a dry way to waterboard you, but people say Les Misérables is the best adaptation yet. Maybe this is the one that finally changes your mind...
Harmless murderers
Because the world needs the palpable sexuality of John Malkovich and Helen Mirren on screen together, here comes Red 2. You’d never know from the inspired title, but it’s actually a sequel to the film Red, which was something of a sleeper hit, and not just because it...
More vulgarity, please
In 1956, not long after she married Death of a Salesman playwright Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe made a movie with director and star Laurence Olivier at England’s Pinewood Studios. The film, The Prince and the Showgirl, came from Terence Rattigan’s drawing-room ...
Three’s a charm
If Toy Story 3 had sprung, Slinky Doglike, from any creative think tank besides Pixar Animation Studios, it might be considered a classic. As is, it’s a good sequel to the 1999 Toy Story 2 and the 1995 original. After a rather shrill and conventional first half, ...
All’s well that ends well
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is a rare gift. Long-running film franchises generally either fade away or leave fans hanging. Director David Yates takes advantage of the opportunity to close the book on this series by creating a film finale that ...
Many days in the life
Like Same Time, Next Year with less guilt or When Harry Met Sally ... with a somewhat different ending, One Day pops in and out of the lives of characters played by Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess across two decades, spanning university graduation to older, wiser 40...

















