What is it with cinema’s fixation this year on beautiful teenage girls dressed in ludicrous outfits and packing heat? First Harmony Korine’s “Spring Breakers” gave us scantily-clad femme fatales in gasmasks and bikinis, blowing away a plantation’s worth of drug dealers. And now, in “Violet & Daisy,” the directorial debut of “Precious” writer Geoffrey Fletcher, the opening sequence features two ... more >
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Violet and Daisy
Something nothing really goes as planned
Saoirse Ronan, Alexis Bledel and Danny Trejo
Directed by Geoffrey Fletcher
Hanna
Kids a-gunnin. What next?
Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana and Cate Blanchett
Directed by Joe Wright
In 1994 Luc Besson directed “The Professional,” a stark drama about a contract killer who befriends a preteen rebel. In that movie a young Natalie Portman wielded her gun for about fifteen seconds but the distorted image was a memorable one, and the ploy was used in other movies like “Kick Ass” and, most recently, in “Hanna,” directed by Joe Wright. Our gun-toting, gravity defying, ass-kicking ... more >
The Lovely Bones
It's the story of a life and everything that came after
Rachel Weisz, Mark Wahlberg and Saoirse Ronan
Directed by Peter Jackson
Peter Jackson’s ‘The Lovely Bones’ accomplishes one thing that’s hard to do. I’ve never seen a film in which the foreboding sounds of inanimate objects cause such an emotional stir while the allegedly animate actors cause almost none. In his adaptation of the Alice Sebold novel about a child murder, Jackson’s film does pretty well in re-creating the sights and sounds of 1973, capturing that ... more >
Atonement
When lies torment and destroy us.
Saoirse Ronan, Brenda Blethyn and Kiera Knightley
Directed by Joe Wright
Film critics are a notoriously grumpy lot, maybe because, unlike the general public, they sometimes have to see films they wouldn’t choose to. Thus, jaded and difficult to please, a number of them have called Atonement a Merchant-Ivory type production—albeit with more soul—made with an eye on Academy awards. Where some have praised it, others have found it as flawed as all screen adaptations of ... more >