Screen

A penetrating look at death and dying, How to Die in Oregon is an HBO-produced documentary that explores the lives of people suffering from debilitating terminal illness.  Oregon was the first state in the nation to legalize physician-assisted suicide in 1994, and, ...

When done well, a movie that simultaneously exists as a certain thing while satirizing that same thing resembles a Mobius strip, a tantalizing narrative...

Stories of how movies get made are as varied as the movies themselves. For Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz, two first-time writer/directors, the story...

At the turn of the 20th century, vast majorities of the planet remained undiscovered for those restless ones who couldn’t possibly imagine a life spent behind a desk or in a factory. If they had the notion, and sufficient funding, there were mountains, deserts, ...

Comfort watching comes in all shapes in sizes. Sometimes it’s a chubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff. Other times it’s Gene Kelly dancing...

When you die, the last eight minutes of your life remain electromagnetically imprinted in your brain. If we could inject someone into that persistent memory, they could solve crimes after the fact. It’s the fascinating premise for director Duncan Jones’ sci-fi ...

Getting low means getting down to business, in the parlance of the backwoods oddity played, wonderfully, by Robert Duvall in Get Low. Let’s get down to business, then. This film, calm but full of feeling, relays an intriguing story brought to life by some ...

Writer/director/demigod of modern American cinema Paul Thomas Anderson — or PTA, as his peeps call him — has a filmography so stunning that merely making a very good movie means it’s his worst one yet. So, with a heavy heart comes the news that The Master isn’t ...

21 JUMP STREET Two young police officers and ex-classmates go undercover at a local high school to investigate a dangerous drug ring. Rated R. At Century, Colony Square and Twin Peaks. — Los Angeles Times/MCT ACT OF VALOR After the rescue of a kidnapped CIA ...

It’s easy to thrill people when they don’t know what’s coming. OK, maybe not easy — paging Mr. Shyamalan — but certainly less difficult than whipping up tension in a film based on a decades-old actual incident, the resolution of which is but a Google search away. ...

In terms of its title, Haywire doesn’t quite go there; it’s more “Haywire-ish.” But it’s eccentric, and the on-screen violence is sharp and exciting — brutal without being either subhumanly sadistic or superhumanly ridiculous...

I'm a lukewarm Jackie Chan fan. He’s been in some terrific films, notably Rush Hour and The Forbidden Kingdom, but he’s also been in a lot of movies that are stupid, including the Rush Hour sequels and the ghastly Around the World in 80 Days...