Category Archives: Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news

Think “Hustlers” is just about strippers ripping off lap-dance clients in a well-publicized New York skin club? Writer-director Lorene Scafaria, who scripted “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist” and “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World,” sees this “true” … Continue reading →

“Inspired by a true story,” women working at New York’s notorious Scores strip club, taking the marks for all they were worth. Or some of it, anyway. Are the Toronto Film Fest group-thinkers right, that Lopez an itd STX have … Continue reading →

She is haggard, as something in her life, this city or her apartment is keeping her awake at night. He meets her, inscrutably scrutinizes her apartment as he walks from room to room. He listens. “Mind if I lie down?” … Continue reading →

The guiding ethos of “Aquarela,” by the Russian documentarian Viktor Kossakovsky, is water, in all its forms, reminding us who Earth really belongs to and the warnings water is giving us. Men — Russians, apparently — struggle with winching a … Continue reading →

It’d be fun to drop in on the tail end of the documentary “Liam Gallagher: As It Was,” having only the Oasis singer’s reputation to go on, his Wikipedia biography to tell you what to expect. He’s charming in that … Continue reading →

It’s a documentary about a little girl found hanging from a swing set in rural North Carolina in 2014. Accident or a modern day lynching? Jacqueline Olive’s award winner opens in limited release Sept. 20.

It’s the endless costume changes, the ornate extravagance, the pastoral idylls and the Christmas Village quaintness of it all. There’s the jewelry, the flapper bangs, the scrubbing, trimming, boiling, polishing and smug sub-minimum wage satisfaction of the servant classes at … Continue reading →

The dire state of water here on the Big Blue Marble, or what happens when the ice melts.

Years ago, I had a lunch interview with the journalist/screenwriter Mark Boal (“The Hurt Locker”) as he passed through town promoting his second film with Kathryn Bigelow, the Hunt for Bin Laden epic “Zero Dark Thirty.” The conversation wrapped up … Continue reading →

The comic Jim Gaffigan takes a deep dive into the dark side with “American Dreamer,” an almost relentlessly downbeat character study in despair. It’s a thriller with no hero, just a funnyman who tosses aside his amusing baggage even when … Continue reading →