Movie Nation

“Red Dawn” is a lot funnier than you remember.

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The image of Edgar Allan Poe passed down to us is that of a dour, pale and morbid drunkard, a poet haunted by lovers who died in his arms. But he was also a playful wordsmith, an eviscerating critic, a man fascinated by cryptography (codes) and fond of dissections.

That’s the Poe of “The Raven,” a fanciful, witty and suspenseful revision of Poe’s last days that is more entertaining than it has any right to be. 

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The hunters become the hunted in the blink of an eye in “The Raid: Redemption,” a neck-snapping/leg-stabbing lead and blood-spattered action overdose from Indonesia. It’s an orgy of beautifully shot and choreographed brawls, shootouts and knife fights, perhaps the cinema’s closest imitation of a first-person-shooter video game ever.

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The rarefied world of classical music is the setting and the intimate “perfect square” of a string quartet the crucible for “A Late Quartet,” a melodrama of love, lust, betrayal and Beethoven. It’s a quiet film of tempestuous but predictable situations and emotions, a movie made watchable by its illustrious cast.

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For much of the cinema’s history, the movies have had the good sense to keep Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis Professor Moriarty off camera, an unseen menace made all the more menacing by his absence.

But Guy Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows,” puts the infamous Professor M. face to face with his foe, Holmes. They quarry, trade threats and play chess. But as the evil genius is played the unimposing Jared Harris (“Mad Men,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”), you can’t help but wonder why Robert Downey Jr. doesn’t just dope-slap this shrimp and “crack on.”

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