Screen

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 ...

Truly, I am madly, deeply in love with the film version of Where the Wild Things Are. Not since Robert Altman took on Popeye a generation ago, and lost, has a major director addressed such a well-loved, all-ages title. This time everything works, from tip to tail, ...

The section of the Tennessee River that forms the northern border of Muscle Shoals, Ala., didn’t always go by that name. Early Native Americans called it “The Singing River” and believed a river princess sang its soft melody...

Dr. Watson and the lads from Scotland Yard load...

In the bizarre world of Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant, there’s a war brewing over “portion” control. It seems the truce between those who sip, leaving humans a little weaker but none the wiser, and those who gorge, gluttons who leave death, destruction and...

Being stranded in the middle of an unforgiving ocean is a theme that’s been explored in films as diverse as Swiss Family Robinson and Hitchcock’s surprisingly tense Lifeboat. But being cast adrift for more than 200 days in a lifeboat with an adult Bengal tiger? It ...

Very early on in director Ron Howard’s ungodly inert Inferno, one of the few interesting characters throws himself off a building, striking several rooftops...

Call it strangeness on a train. The highly gimmicky, very entertaining new thriller Source Code takes place mostly on a passenger car, part of the fictional Chicago Commuter Rail line, speeding toward the Loop carrying a bomb planted by an unknown terrorist. Our ...

At its worst, cinema verite is aimless pretense masquerading as artistic intent. At its best, it is Detropia, a documentary that adds soul to statistics, going inside the implosion of a once-proud city using a sprawling, haunting approach. That isn’t to say that ...

A police procedural that's less about criminal...

Ten percent to the usual charities?” I love a line like that, smack in the middle of a scene featuring bank robbers dividing up the spoils. It proves they’re good guys at heart, willing to spread it around (if only for the sake of appearances) while blowing the rest ...

After sitting through the enjoyable but mind-numbingly violent Machete, I’ve come up with a new movie category: bloodbath porn. From the very first scene in this Robert Rodriguez homage to ’70s action films, Machete’s body count surpasses everything since Rambo. Not ...