The season of serious films is upon us. It’s time again for the earnest, honorable pictures that like to quiet the room, just when you’re in a good conversational groove, to say, “Ladies and gentlemen, may we have your attention, please?” Which means, “May we have your award consideration, please?”  Zach Falifianakis (right) takes another […]

I went to a boarding school in New England, much like the one in Never Let Me Go, but whose mascot was the pelican. The pelican, while not exactly an intimidator on the sports field, is a perversely charitable bird known to feed its offspring with its own blood when no food is available. That […]

It’s strange to think that the famously adamantine Clint Eastwood should be so easy to brush off nowadays. But somehow his movies have become wishy-washy.  Clint Eastwood gets philosophical, directing Matt Damon (pictured) in this supernatural drama about a psychic who can—but refuses to— communicate with the dead. Fitting, then, that it’s a tsunami that […]

RED stands for “Retired, Extremely Dangerous,” and refers to a once-elite team of aged and variously cuddly trained killers. The comedy comes from Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner’s graphic novel for DC Comics. There is oldness even in its adolescent fixations: the soundtrack rawk throb and stunty slo-mo set pieces, the squall of semiautomatic weapons […]

Yes, the title has two meanings: Conviction refers to the guilty verdict that put a man in prison for many years, and to the certitude with which his sister then devoted her life to proving his innocence. But that just makes things doubly obvious. Well, if this ain’t love: Hilary Swank goes through the trouble […]

Isn’t it too soon for a movie about the making of Facebook? Probably. But life and all its weird facsimiles come at us so quickly nowadays, which is partly why you know you want to see The Social Network anyway: to process.  Jesse Eisenberg plays Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, which aims to expose […]

Alpha and Omega (PG, 88 minutes) Two wolves try to find their way home after being shipped by park rangers across the country in this animated romp. Voices by Justin Long, Christina Ricci and Dennis Hopper. Carmike Cinema 6 The American (R, 105 minutes) An American assassin (George Clooney) heads to Italy for one last assignment […]

Come to think of it, Mao’s Last Dancer is just the movie you’d expect from seeing ballet star Cunxin Li’s memoir adapted for the director of Driving Miss Daisy (Bruce Beresford) by the writer of Shine (Jan Sardi). Not that it would ever occur to you to expect such a movie. But here it is, […]

 Early on in The Town, we see Ben Affleck in a Boston Bruins jacket. Then we see him in a Red Sox jacket. But no Celtics, no Patriots. What, not a fan? Or is it that hockey and baseball actually do figure in to the plot, and this is Affleck’s idea of foreshadowing? Rebecca Hall […]

Wait. Summer’s over? Again? How the hell does this keep happening? Can’t something be done? Well, why don’t we just keep going to the movies anyway? Here’s a handful of films that’ll be playing this fall. M. Night Shyamalan’s Devil. Devil. (Opening September 17; with Chris Messina) If there’s anything worse than being trapped in […]