A Separation — the fifth feature by Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi — is an urgently shot courtroom drama designed to put you in the jury box. Dispensing with preliminaries, it opens at a judicial hearing where, both facing the camera that stands in for the judge, a quarrelsome husband and…
Congratulations Lee Kounas and Zach Kaz! You won free tickets to see Rocky in 35mm at Texas Theatre! It begins showing tonight and plays through the weekend. Check in with Texas Theatre’s website for showtimes. Thanks to Texas Theatre for the tickets and to all of you who entered. Didn’t…
I love the original Rocky and Rocky II — things get weird around Rocky III and anything beyond that is just an unwatchable collection of montages with robot sidekicks and no Burgess Meredith. But that original film’s focus on the budding love between homely, but kind Adrian and the sweetly…
Anthony Mackie is one of those actors known as a “scene stealer.” With unforgettable roles in Half-Nelson, The Hurt Locker, 8 Mile (his debut), and more notable films than I can list, the 33-year-old actor has built up quite an impressive filmography in just ten years time. His latest film…
Liam Neeson has become quite the badass as of late (IMO he’s always been a badass…Darkman!), with machismo roles in Batman Begins, The A-Team, and of course Taken, in which he kills, like, more than 50 dudes with his bare hands in a manner that would make even Jack Bauer…
The hero of the red-herring heist flick Man on a Ledge draws two reactions from the Manhattan throng beneath his 21st-floor perch on a midtown hotel. The first, of course, is the predictable “just get it over with” impatience of New Yorkers impeded by police barricades. The second is unlikely…
Dallas ISD: School Zone Dallas Presents: Jerry Junkins Musical Production of Beauty and the Beast from Dallas Independent School Dist on Vimeo….when you can get this courtesy a DISD elementary? That’s got to be, like, at least 5Ds. Maybe more. Doesn’t It seem like they’re coming right at you? Follow…
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close Director: Stephen Daldry Writer: Eric Roth Condensed Cast: Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Thomas Horn You may have heard about this one. Maybe because it’s already scooping up awards on it’s way to the Oscars (our own DFWFCA gave it 3rd in the year’s best pictures…
Director Stephen Daldry has never met a Big Theme he didn’t like: After 2002’s The Hours, a lugubrious women’s-problem picture touching on AIDS and assisted suicide, he went to Auschwitz with 2008’s The Reader. Following two such high-toned literary adaptations with such hefty subject matter, Daldry’s logical next stop is…
There’s a point in Haywire when the film’s protagonist, ex-Marine Mallory Kane (Gina Carano), gone rogue from her job as hired muscle for a private government subcontractor, takes a fall while scaling down a drainpipe and hits the ground with a crunch that knocks the wind out of you. It’s…
Contraband Director: Baltasar Kormákur Writer: Aaron Guzikowski Condensed Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Kate Beckinsale, Ben Foster Mark Wahlberg stars as a former pop star/underwear model turned actor turned smuggler turned former smuggler who gets himself in deep with a drug lord to protect his brother-in-law’s life. Millions of dollars in counterfeit…
It’s 1992 at the start of In the Land of Blood and Honey, and Ajla (Zana Marjanovic) and Danijel (Goran Kostic) are about to hook up at a Bosnian nightclub when they’re interrupted by a bomb blast. A few months later, Ajla is one of dozens of women rounded up…
A mushroom cloud blooms over Manhattan at the opening of The Divide. We see it reflected in the tearful eyes of Eva (Lauren German), who’ll spend much of the subsequent movie watching and waiting. She and eight other building residents, including her French fiancé, Sam (Iván González), manage to get…
A holy hot mess of the sacred and the inane, Joyful Noise, about a small-town Southern gospel choir, lifts from Usher’s “Yeah!” to give us this inspirational lyric: “Now God and I are the best of homies.” The film is Jesus for Gleeks — no surprise, since writer-director Todd Graff’s…
In the first scene of The Iron Lady, which re-teams director Phyllida Lloyd with her Mamma Mia! star Meryl Streep, eightysomething Margaret Thatcher is presented as a little old lady unfit for the fast-moving world outside her hermetic London townhouse. The bulk of the movie takes place in an even…
Roman Polanski’s adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s hit play, Carnage, stars Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet as two sets of Brooklyn parents whose social, economic and philosophic differences are leveled in less than 80 minutes by their common pettiness and immaturity. Posh pair Alan and Nancy…
The first weekend in January, and the month as a whole, is traditionally known as a kitchen sink for theatrical releases…unfortunately, it’s typically stuff that, at any other time of the year, would end up in the garbage disposal. Instead of the studio flipping the switch on it and going…
The first 10 minutes of Dee Rees’ funny, moving, nuanced and impeccably acted first feature, in which coming of age and coming out are inseparable, sharply reveal the conflicts that 17-year-old Alike (Adepero Oduye) faces. At a lesbian club — maybe for the first time — she gapes in awe…
Should auld acquaintance be forgot – or if you forgot to make plans for the evening — don’t forget that there are lots of cinema New Year’s Eve scenes worth celebrating. Pop a cork and ring in the New Year and lots of yesteryears with these flicks. (Hey, it’s more…
What a year it was at the movies! Just reflect for a second all the places we’ve traveled together on our cinematic voyages of 2011 in that theatrical transport known as film. Alternate worlds and realities. All over the map of our own. Forward to the future. Back in time…
It’s the biggest movie weekend of the year! Let’s check out the season’s offerings at the movie theater… Director David Fincher returns to his bloody roots a la Se7en and takes his own albeit unique stab at The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the first in the late Stieg Larsson’s…
Except for the debut of the Three Stooges trailer, this has been a great month for Hollywood teasing upcoming blockbusters. Over on Apple’s trailer site, you can find Prometheus, The Hobbit, and The Dark Knight Rises first official trailer. Damn fine week, ol’ Hollywood. Which means, it didn’t take long…
