Movie Reviews

Nicole Kidman (left) and Mia Wasikowska star as Evelyn and India Stoker in Park Chan-wook's new thriller.

Arts

A Disappointing Thriller Channels Hitchcock And Bram 'Stoker'

2:26pm March 01, 2013

by David Edelstein

The film is ripe with a creepy-crawly feel that would be affecting if the tone weren't so arch. Directed by Park Chan-wook, written by Wentworth Miller and starring Nicole Kidman, Mia Wasikowska and Matthew Goode, Stoker is a vile little chamber horror, says critic David Edelstein.

Queue Listen Now

Movie Review: 'Jack The Giant Slayer'

6:58am March 01, 2013

by Kenneth Turan

The story of Jack and his beanstalk has been filmed innumerable times by people as diverse as Gene Kelly, Chuck Jones and the Three Stooges. While he's been through the Hollywood shuffle before, there's never been a Jack tale that's delivered so little pleasure for so many dollars.

Queue Listen Now

Gael Garcia Bernal stars as an advertising man in Chile under Pinochet in the 2012 film No, which is nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the upcoming Academy Awards.

Arts

Voting Pinochet Out Was More Than Just A Yes Or 'No'

1:40pm February 20, 2013

by John Powers

In the Chilean film No, which is nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, a young ad man devises a campaign to vote the dictator Augusto Pinochet out of office using rainbows and catchy theme songs.

Queue Listen Now

How 'Sound City' Changed The Face Of Rock 'N' Roll

11:26am February 12, 2013

by Kenneth Turan

Sound City is a documentary that came out of the Sundance Film Festival about a legendary recording studio in Van Nuys, California. It's a mash note to the Neve soundboard in the Sound City studios.

Queue Listen Now

Sports

Super Bowl Underdogs, Are Stats On Their Side?

11:26am February 12, 2013

by Mike Pesca

The Baltimore Ravens hope to top off their run to the Super Bowl with a win in the big game Sunday. If they do, they'll continue a trend of unlikely champions — six of the past eight Super Bowl victors weren't the top seeds in their conferences.

Queue Listen Now

Brutus (Salvatore Striano) fixes a wild stare at the witnesses and conspirators after Julius Caesar's murder, in a scene from Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's Caesar Must Die.

Arts

'Caesar' Comes Alive In An Italian Prison

1:09pm February 08, 2013

by David Edelstein

In Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's new film, Caesar Must Die, a group of prisoners put on Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. It's barely an hour and a quarter, and it's physically small-scale, but it's so compressed it wears you out — in a good way.

Queue Listen Now

The documentary The Gatekeepers examines Israeli security policy in interviews with six former heads of the secretive Shin Bet agency.

Arts

'Gatekeepers' Let Us Inside Israeli Security

10:24am February 01, 2013

by David Edelstein

The Oscar-nominated documentary directed by Dror Moreh is not a defense of Israeli security policy, but a critique. The six Shin Bet heads Moreh interviews may believe in the tactics they devised, but it's the overall strategy they think is flawed.

Queue Listen Now

'Fruitvale' Stands Out At Sundance

9:14am January 25, 2013

The Sundance Film Festival is underway in Park City, Utah. Fruitvale is based on an incident in which a young man was shot and killed by a BART police officer. His death triggered riots thorughout Oakland, Calif.

Queue Listen Now

Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and her sister, Lilly (Isabelle Nelisse), are near-feral orphans in the horror thriller Mama.

Arts

'Mama': A Good Old-Fashioned Horror Movie

1:29pm January 22, 2013

by David Edelstein

In an age of werewolves, hormonal vampires and endless sequels, horror movies have lost some edge. But Mama, starring Jessica Chastain, is an entertaining step in the right — which is to say backward — direction.

Queue Listen Now

John Schlesinger's 1971 film Sunday Bloody Sunday has just been released on Blu-ray. The film's complex love triangle starred Peter Finch, Murray Head and Glenda Jackson.

Mozart's Starring Role In 'Sunday Bloody Sunday'

1:35pm January 07, 2013

by Lloyd Schwartz

The 1971 John Schlesinger film, recently released on Blu-ray, tells the story of a love triangle and makes moving use of a trio from the opera Cosi fan tutte as the film's musical theme.

Queue Listen Now