Of all the grim and somber films over the past year skewering America’s mismanagement of the “War on Terror” — each of which have run aground at the box office — who’d have thought that an absurdist stoner comedy would be the one to get it right?! Significantly more politically charged than the original, this […]

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Amy Poehler yelled at me. It was about a year ago. My best friend was acting in an improv comedy marathon with Poehler’s Upright Citizen’s Brigade in New York City and when I went to take a picture of her, sans-flash (not against the rules, by the way), she stopped in the middle of her […]

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The Life Before Her Eyes is a lush and beautiful film based on the novel by Laura Kasischke. Kasischke, a writer known for her ability to make prose read like poetry, is ably interpreted by director Vadim Perelman (House of Sand and Fog) who translates her material with soft lighting, supple colors, gentle water motifs […]

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If you’ve ever pined over the loss of a significant other, this movie is for you. If you’ve ever had your still-beating heart ripped out of your chest and torn into a million, tiny pieces right in front of you, while dressed only in your birthday suit, this movie is for you. If you like […]

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The Visitor is not to be missed — a delicate, tender humanistic drama that juggles organic humor, emotional emancipation and unforeseen catastrophe with masterful skill and dexterity. It addresses the timely issues of post-9/11 immigration and incarceration, but avoids polemics by keeping the focus solely on the human cost of our government’s policies.

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If Mark Twain had taken a swing at the script for The Forbidden Kingdom, it probably would have been titled, “A Boston Yankee in Emperor Chan’s Court.” East meets West in this enjoyable but ultimately perplexing hybrid of Asian lore and American discipleship.

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Cliché as it may sound, Young@Heart is the feel-good hit of the year — a film that proves that age is only a state of mind, stardom is only a social security check away and wine and cheese aren’t the only things that get better with time.

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Morgan Spurlock (Michael Moore without the vitriol and bile), director of the outrageous and eye-opening Super Size Me, follows up his exposé on America’s fast food addiction with an ambitious sophomore project. In Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?, the documentarian sets out to do what the U.S. military, intelligence services and countless […]

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Perhaps because Hollywood can always be relied on for false uplift and pervasively happy endings, independent films frequently seem to dwell on the lives of dark, tortured souls and their equally dark and tortured lives. Once in a while an indie comes along that seems to blend the best of both worlds — troubled lives […]

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The engaging yet conventional Street Kings is the most offensive sort of movie — a film that telegraphs every detail down to the tiniest nuance, yet still doesn’t trust its audience to have the necessary intelligence to keep up. The film spends two hours unraveling a mystery that anyone with half a brain figured out […]

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