Even a cursory glance at the numerous articles following the death, at age 85, of Shirley Temple Black reveals a fact we may not have known: America’s sweetheart was an actual sweetheart. Witness the following: despite her fame, which made it impossible for her to have a normal child’s life, she never felt entitled. Unlike today’s child stars or children of stars—the ones with the very memorable first names, the super-fly hairdoes and

Of course we like them, we love them, we are grateful to them, these stage and film actors who give us so much. When we occasionally hear bad news--an overdose, an accident, an unforgiving illness, a suicide--as the case may be, we’re surprised at how young they were or how untimely their deaths--Heath Ledger comes to mind. All we can do is keep the memories and have a warm thought for them when we come across an image or hear their name.

In “August: Osage County,” we enter the story (based on the Tracy Letts play), of the appalling Westons who live in Oklahoma. The disappearance of the patriarch, a poet and a drunk (Sam Sheppard), brings together the members of this spectacularly dysfunctional family. In the stifling heat, they claw and tear each other to pieces, they cuss, yell, and throw at one another’s face awful revelation after awful revelation. Intelligent writing and great ensemble acting make “August” fascinating.

PARIS - Abdellatif Kechiche’s new film is well-made, possibly deserving its Palme d’Or at the last Cannes Film Festival, but It. Is. Too. Long. The first hour is breathtaking in its precise description of Adèle (played by the remarkable Adèle Exarchopoulos--PROFILE), adrift in adolescent yearnings and not having found her foothold in the real world, who becomes conscious of her attraction to women especially after she

To say that critics have not been kind to Shane Salerno’s “Salinger” is an understatement. They call it subjective to the point of hagiography, bloated and overlong, the ultimate intrusion in the life of an author who lived on the equivalent of a mountaintop in order to be left alone by the myriad fans enthralled for the last two generations by his single book, “The Catcher in the Rye.” They say the music is syrupy

Film excellence at the Toronto International Film Festival which ended [...]

The Persian story goes, when your heart is filled with sorrow, find a patience stone or syngué sabour that will listen as you talk to it until it can take no more and bursts into pieces, lifting that weight from your shoulders and leaving you free. This well-known legend has been written up any number of times, including by Iranian novelist Sadegh Chubak, and filmed at least once, in 1968. It is also the basis of the novel by Atiq Rahimi, Syngué sabour, that in 2008