A Christmas Carol (review)

Robert Zemeckis appears to have given up making fantasies for grownups in favor of making theme-park attractions designed to do nothing more than shut the kiddies up for 90 minutes, if they can sit still for that long for the dazzling…

Coco Before Chanel (review)

Audrey Tautou looks *amazing,* surrounded by women who flounce around like fluffy Edwardian fruit cups. But moments like that — in which you really feel the impact of Chanel’s legacy — are, *tant pis,* all too rare…

Ong Bak 2: The Beginning (review)

Rewinding to 15th century Thailand, this is the downright Dickensian tale of a royal boy kidnapped by slavers and raised by thieves who grows into a man who vows revenge on everyone who’s wronged him.

Amelia (review)

This *Amelia* is a quiet, reflective film, and Earhart is not an icon or a symbol: she’s a human being, and the fantasy comes in how the film depicts her life and her achievements and everything about her not as something a *woman* did but something a *person* did.

The Damned United (review)

I might not know from football, I do know people, and *The Damned United* is an absolutely thrilling story, one both hilarious and poignant, about a man who is downright classical in his flaws…

An Education movie review: A-plus

Someone once said that perfect movies are boring and only flawed movies intriguing, and then along comes a movie like An Education, about which the number of things that are absolutely perfect is impossible to measure… and it’s thrilling and captivating anyway.

9 (review)

Imagine if Jules Verne wrote a movie for Pixar, if that steampunk visionary looked forward from his perch in the late Victorian age to a Great War in his near future that didn’t pause for twenty years to let everyone to catch their breath but instead went apocalyptic.