• We need to talk about Kevin

    We Need to Talk About Kevin isn’t the first film this year to outlast its immediacy. A novel written by Lionel Shriver in the wake of the Columbine school killings, director Lynne Ramsay has been trying to make the film since her last feature, Morvern Callar, in 2002. The unusually long gestation period has stripped the story of its ripped-from-the-headlines quality. It now plays like a quaint, violent memory. These are the under-parented demon children of not so long ago

  • London River

    The premise of Rachid Bouchareb’s new film London River is simple: as London reels from the catastrophic transit bombings of June 2005, two people are brought together by some aberrant twist of fate. Elisabeth (played by the lovely Brenda Blethyn) comfortably lives out her retirement on a Guernsey Islands farm in England when she catches the news of the terrorist attacks. This immediately yields the question,

  • Steve McQueen’s “Shame”

    A man. A woman. An underground train. Traded looks. Traded fantasies. No one looking. No one aware. The train stops. The lick of her lips. The ring on her finger. Will they? Won’t they? The crowd in the station. The man is Brandon. We soon meet the rest of him. His job. His coldness. His naked body wrapped in blue sheets. His overpowering sexual impulse. Alleys. Back doors, Luxury hotels. His computer tracked off to clean porn.

  • The Artist

    American audiences who would pass on Michel Hazanavicius’s The Artist because a) it’s a silent movie and b) it’s in black and white, will be missing one of the best films in decades. Just like some of its unforgettable elders in the silent-film era, The Artist is funny, touching without being sentimental, with story line and feelings perfectly conveyed without words. If you ever wondered how the great stars of day before yesterday

  • The artist

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  • The Muppets

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  • The Muppets

    Who doesn’t love The Muppets? Birds love them. Bees love them. Even monkeys stuck in trees love them. That’s been the case since the 1970s, when Jim Henson first stuck his hand into a green sock and pulled out a cultural icon (I know, he’s not really a green sock.) Why you would have to be a heartless Texas oilman played by Chris Cooper (with his own personal rap!) to want to quash the long-gestating big-screen