• There are two types of British indie movies. Some are touched with deep or crazy ideas too creative for mainstream release. Others give middle-aged British stars something to do in between “Harry Potter” movies. Emma Thompson and Pierce Brosnan are the middle-age British stars of record in Jeff Hopkins’s romantic comedy, “The Love Punch.” They play a divorced English couple driven to both revenge

  • With two first-round picks in the 2012 NFL draft the Cleveland Browns were favorites to trade up to the number two overall pick and land the rights to Heisman trophy-winner Robert Griffin, III. They were outbid by the Washington Redskins, whom Griffin would lead to the playoffs. The Browns kept their picks and chose running back Trent Richardson and quarterback Brandon Weeden. Two short years later, neither

  • Transformations rarely come as thick as the one made by Vanessa Hudgens for "Gimme Shelter." The sweet-cheeked kids-show chanteuse tosses on the hoodie from the bottom of the pile of dirty clothes. She becomes Apple, a teenage wretch escaping from her life with an abusive mom. This street child isn’t above cutting her hair in clumps or eating pizza out of a dumpster. That was not a skill learned on the set of High School Musical. "Gimme Shelter" starts out looking like "The Blind Side"

  • The shadows for “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” fall over the movie and the actors themselves. When did Kevin Costner become an old man? What happened to Keira Knightley’s rise to stardom? Why has a relaunch of Tom Clancy’s heroic CIA analyst fallen into the January dump period, especially when it, at least, is not a disaster? There’s certainly nothing shadowy about the chosen story for this intended reboot. This isn’t the first time

  • In "American Hustle"’s would-be signature moment con-man Christian Bale shows G-man Bradley Cooper a Rembrandt in a gallery. He explains that it’s really a fake. Who is the better artist, he asks, the original artist or the person who took the time and skill to fake it?

    Well, I would say the artist. He is the one who perceived it. He is the one who conceived it. He is the one who summoned the inspiration.

  • Among movies about race in America, how many great films have been made about slavery? We’ve seen gentle drivers ("Driving Miss Daisy"), sisterhoods of maids ("The Help") and pizza places going up in smoke for our sins ("Do the Right Thing"). Most of these films focus on the sixties or the modern day. Even Lincoln barely touches on slavery as more than legal theory.

    This enormous gap

  • Alfonso Cuaron’s space station disaster saga “Gravity” is an intellectually-soft video game, a SuperMario of space debris and a disappointment as a space-survival story.

    A great deal of praise is being heaped on the 3-D outer space experience, labeled as immersive and hypnotic. Comparisons are being drawn to the upside-down, gravity-free experience