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Wesley Morris
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Boston French Film Festival features lesser-known stars and directors
A quick scan of the list of movies playing in this year’s Boston French Film Festival turns up few auteur names. There’s something new from both the great Claire Denis and the underappreciated Philippe Garrel, and a new film by the increasingly exciting Christophe Honoré. But for the most part, these movies and their makers are lesser known here. The ...
'Jerichow' movie review - 'Jerichow' showtimes
As ridiculous German suspense dramas go, you could do worse than “Jerichow.’’ It’s the sort of movie in which you know what’s likely to happen because whoever made it - here that would be Christian Petzold - appears to have just discovered concepts like foreshadowing and irony. In “Jerichow,’’ when a toy cigarette lighter makes an appearance in one early ...‘Women of Faith’ is guided by the voices of nuns
Rebecca M. Alvin’s documentary “Women of Faith’’ attempts to tell a history of New England nuns. It winds up listening to various nuns discuss their relationship to God, the Catholic Church, and their sexuality. The film is part of the Museum of Fine Arts’ local filmmaker series, and most of the 60-minute run time is spent with the women of ...‘The Stoning of Soraya M.’ doesn’t hold back anything
If nothing else, “The Stoning of Soraya M.’’ is truth in titling. Soraya M. gets stoned - and not in a Harold and Kumar way. The projectiles are rocks as opposed to hydroponic grass. And, appropriately enough, this is less a movie than a blunt instrument, a bit of political parable, a bit more outrage, and nary a scrap of ...In "Tetro,'' Coppola rediscovers himself
Were it some unknown director’s first movie or some great director’s last, Francis Ford Coppola’s “Tetro’’ would be either auspicious or loosely august. But alas, Coppola, who at 70 seems far from his beginnings and not terribly close to the end, brings with each new film the baggage of having once been himself."Food, Inc.'' serves up righteous indignation
As you might gather from the title, Rob Kenner’s documentary “Food, Inc.’’ is, in part, concerned with the extent to which industrial food production has replaced farming in America. It’s part activism, part school-assembly lecture. If you’re told where most fast-food chains’ ground beef comes from, how much E. coli is in it, how much ammonia has been added to ..."Moon'' stars Sam Rockwell as an astronaut sadly finishing three years in space
‘Moon’’ might be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for fans of Sam Rockwell. Will there ever be more of him in one movie than there is here? This is partly a matter of time (he’s in the whole movie). But it’s also a matter of volume: There’s more than one of him. Rockwell in duplicate is the most interesting thing about “Moon,’’ ...Bullock and Ryan are an unhappy couple in "The Proposal''
Casting a romantic comedy is like eating. Just because you like sardines and cheese doesn’t mean you like them together. Sardines and cheese together is gross. As it turns out, so is the pairing of Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. Individually, his sarcasm can be amusing, and her straining for comedy is occasionally funny. In “The Proposal,’’ neither brings out ...Blessed is the Match movie review - Blessed is the Match showtimes
In 1944, a young Hungarian named Hannah Senesh parachuted into Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. A few years earlier, she had discovered Zionism, left Europe before the Germans descended, and arrived in Palestine before it became Israel. The occasion for her homecoming was a clandestine British military mission to locate downed fliers and rescue endangered Jews, one of whom was Senesh's mother.'Away We Go' journeys from serious to smug
"Away We Go" is a road movie for idealists. Verona and Burt (Maya Rudolph and John Krasinski) cross the continent in pursuit of the perfect place to raise their unborn baby. Among other cities, they try Tucson, Phoenix, and Montreal, hoping one of them feels right enough to stay. Each location introduces a friend or relative of varying emotional stability ...'Imagine That' stretches a cute concept
'Imagine That" is family-movie mediocrity (lately, it seems that unless we're talking about Pixar there's no other kind). A workaholic dad bonds with his creative 6-year-old daughter, who brings him to her imaginary world, which due either to lack of money or, well, imagination, the audience doesn't get to see. You can take the title any number of ways: as ...Nia Vardalos finds love, and some laughs, among the ruins
The folks responsible for "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" - the "ethnic" romantic comedy that ate the 2002 box office - have made "My Life in Ruins," a second cute, shoddy-looking movie. The Ruins are Greek. The life, once again, is Nia Vardalos's. The problem with the new movie is the same as with the previous one. Vardalos has this ...Closeted politicians stir filmmaker's 'Outrage'
Of the many insinuations in "Outrage," Kirby Dick's sad, devastating new documentary about closeted gay politicians - OK, alleged closeted gay politicians - the one that's most disturbing is the case made against a former Southern congressman.'Il Divo' a dazzlingly grim look at corruption, greed
'Il Divo" is showboat moviemaking, but the opulence is of a piece with the film's damning assessment of the durable Italian elder statesman Giulio Andreotti. It begins as a collection of arresting images and concludes two hours later in the same fashion. The opening minutes parade images of murdered bankers and politicians, all of whom are identified by blood-red title ...'The Song of Sparrows' sings with poetic grace
The Muslim phrase Inch'Allah, or "God willing," is used often in "The Song of Sparrows," a new film from the Iranian director Majid Majidi. But God's will shouldn't be confused with a filmmaker's. This is a movie of small details, where Majidi is angling for little tragedies that are orchestrated by screenwriting more than they seem cosmically preordained.Sam Raimi's vision of 'Hell' is a real scream
In 1981, Sam Raimi's "The Evil Dead" made a breakthrough for cheap-looking schlock. He found the comedy in dismemberment. The horror had a kind of slapstick kick, simultaneously funny and frightening.Cannes lineup shows darker side of mothers' love
CANNES, France - The weather here is perfect this time of year. The suntans could win their owners NAACP membership. And the movies gathered for the Cannes Film Festival, now in its 62d year, provide an invaluable window to the state of the art.
'Summer Hours' explores a catalog memories in a family home for sale
Olivier Assayas's "Summer Hours" features three adult siblings, several long conversations about whether to sell their family's sprawling country house, and one plastic grocery bag containing the plaster pieces of an Edgar Degas sculpture. The movie is full of quiet and sadness. And I'll confess that I miss the irreverence, absurdity, and manic ambition of Assayas's recent work - 2002's ...Getting suited to Cannes takes time
CANNES, France - Anyone who doubts that the world's film critics are different from the average Us Weekly reader should have been at Salle Debussy during the opening-night festivities for the 62d Festival de Cannes. Salle Debussy was not the venue for the opening-night film, Pixar's "Up." That was being held in the adjacent (and palatial) Grand Théâtre Lumière in ...
'Sleep Dealer' is a clever sci-fi film that drones on in a good way
In "Sleep Dealer," people can upload their memories and sell them on a website. Mexican day laborers work in California at night - from Tijuana. And a popular TV show called "Drones!" features military aircraft annihilating any perceived threat to US national security. The movie's sense of science fiction dovetails with its sense of satire and paranoia. Directed, edited, and ...In 'Angels & Demons,' Ron Howard exorcises what's best about the book
Not all trash is art, but there's an art to making trash. So, father, forgive the makers of "Angels & Demons," for they know not what they do. Dan Brown's mystery novel, full of flamboyantly murdered cardinals, facts of every gratuitous stripe, and information kiosks masquerading as characters, has been given the serious treatment. OK, no movie whose climax includes ...In 'Tokyo Sonata,' the everyday is strange
'Tokyo Sonata" begins and ends in calm. But the generic domestic serenity of the opening minutes mutates into an almost otherworldly placidness by the final shot. Sure, the stress of being alive has body-snatched the Sasakis, the typical middle-class Japanese family at the film's center. But so has a catastrophe that neither we nor they can readily identify or explain.