After too many Metaphysics 101 (Malik’s “Tree of Life” and Gaspard Noe’s “Love” come to mind) and anguished what’s-the-meaning-of life questions awkwardly addressed, Denis Villeneuve’s “Arrival” takes us into adult territory. The Canadian filmmaker has already accustomed us to his diverse and masterful corpus of works, so his venture into Twelve spaceships, for lack of a better word, land in various parts of our planet where they

The feel-good La La Land, director Damien Chazelle's prohibitive awards favorite, is a movie of mystery. Can Emma Stone sing? (She can.) Can Ryan Gosling sing and dance? (As a singer, he makes an OK dancer.) The real and lasting question rising from its smoggy, sunny success, however, is this one: Why don’t they make more musicals? Every week a pigeon flies in from “The Death of Cinema”-land with a horror story about

Probably the most famous first lady in the history of the United States, people remember Jacqueline Kennedy for riding next to her dying husband in the most perfect pink dress anyone had ever seen. This image permanently stuck in our head lights Pablo Larrain’s “Jackie” is fueled by this incoherent image pink and bloody – the glamour and the grief. Jackie isn’t the story of a murder. It’s the story of a funeral. Still overwhelmed by

Oh, what, you want to talk about “Allied,” the film?

Where’s the fun in that? Wouldn’t you rather talk about Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Marion Cotillard? Popcorn, please! Look in the mirror and be honest with yourself. Would you really rather go in-depth on the art direction? Twice Brad Pitt has made espionage movies about a spy married to a woman who might be

The first few months of the year can be a little bit slow at the cinema, but in 2017 film fans will have something to look forward to. “Logan” is due out in March as the finale to Hugh Jackman’s seventeen-year run playing Wolverine and expectations are already high. The trailer got the whole internet excited, and while the "Wolverine" spin-off films haven’t always been particularly successful, people have always enjoyed

A man stricken with Parkinson's disease tries to shift from a chair to his wheelchair; even with his wife and stay-in caretaker assisting, he falls, his eyes filled with terror. A man with emphysema, who can only use one his lungs, wheezes, in a high-pitched croak, that he desperately needs one of his many anxiety meds. A ninety-two year-old woman with dementia—whose Costa Rican caretaker found her after a serious fall—has a casual

Less a modern Western than an inside look at Hollywood’s fragile psychology, the film “The Magnificent Seven” is a lesson in the way that the movies think at the moment. It’s an encouraging thing, and a more honest historical assessment, to re-create an Old West posse with minorities in major roles. It’s another thing to be so perfectly, comically and distractingly fancied up with diversity that a focus group seems like