Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (review)

This documentary look at a year in the life of the 75-year-old comedienne is a sad, startling exploration of the vagaries of fame, the insecurities of celebrity, and the realities behind the typical “but it’s just a joke” excuses that prop up cheap, vulgar humor.

Gulliver’s Travels (review)

If you’ve been possessed of a burning desire to behold Jack Black’s belly flab in 3D, then I am delighted to announce that your moment has arrived. What’s that? You say it’s Black’s buttcrack you crave the sight of, rendered in three glorious dimensions? This, my friend, is your lucky day.

For Colored Girls (review)

Indie filmmaker Tyler Perry has spun an unlikely career out of catering to underserved black audiences by giving them excruciatingly unwatchable minstrel-show movies. Now, finally, Perry has made a film that doesn’t pander, that has something meaningful to say — something actually worth hearing…

Howl (review)

James Franco’s elucidation of Allen Ginsberg is soaring in its warmth and sincerity. The words are (mostly) the writer’s, but the vitality and the passion are all Franco’s: he makes the poet breathe for us today in a way that feels entirely modern and relevant.

Catfish (review)

The ambitions that Mark Zuckerberg had for Facebook — at least what we see of them in The Social Network — seem so small and sad and deeply ungrand next to the reality of how life on Facebook plays out a mere few years later in the profoundly poignant Catfish.

Jack Goes Boating (review)

He is Jack’s self-conscious heart. The title, you see, is a metaphor, for oddball Jack deciding it’s time to open up and experience something of the world, such as learning to swim and going on dates.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (review)

It’s sort of adorable and sort of terrifying to look at Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and see the ultimate 80s icon of sharky, sociopathic greed — Gordon Gekko — reduced to an object of quaint amusement, for both the characters onscreen and for us in the viewing audience.