Movie Review

'Fitzgerald Family Christmas' Offers Your Yearly Dose of Cinematic Dysfunctional Family Drama

In his latest effort, writer-director-star Edward Burns piles on the family drama (abusive husbands, dying dads, 9/11) instead of crafting characters.

'Cheerful Weather for the Wedding' Yearns to Be Darker Than the Usual Period Drama

Dressed as a “Downton Abbey” sibling, this period drama is both pricklier and more disappointingly tame, thanks to a bland turn from Felicity Jones.

'Hyde Park on Hudson' Exists Solely to Remind Audiences of Bill Murray's Talent

Murray makes for an enjoyably low-key FDR, but otherwise this slight bauble doesn’t leave much of an impression.

Bloodshed Meets Bathos in 'Deadfall'

This finely acted and sharply directed crime drama, starring Eric Bana, Olivia Wilde, and Sissy Spacek, suffers from a script wallowing in family bathos and gratuitous gore.

Robert Carlyle Saves 'California Solo'

Robert Carlyle’s hard-drinking former rocker turned farm worker is an entertaining presence, but the movie containing him spends too much time spinning its wheels.

'The Children Next Door' Celebrates Resiliency

By putting very human faces to a widespread epidemic, director Doug Block's documentary both humanizes and celebrates the children who survive domestic abuse.

The Pitfalls of Playing Butch in 'What a Man'

This German knock-off of Hollywood romcoms stays charming thanks to an eminently likable cast led by director and star Matthias Schweighöfer.

'Killing Them Softly' Carries a Big Stick

Andrew Dominik’s last movie, 2007’s “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” was an elegiac deconstruction of the Western. His latest, “Killing Them Softly,” takes the same approach to the gangster film. There’s violence aplenty, but once again Dominik is fascinated by something far ...

Love and Pain in the South of France in 'Rust and Bone'

Even as the movie piles on melodramatic tragedies, Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts give eminently watchable, painfully believable performances as the physically and emotionally damaged leads.

The Softer Side of the Master of Suspense

If "Hitchcock" relies too much on famous people impersonating other famous people, there's nonetheless a redeeming core of cinephilia at work.