MOVIE REVIEWS: THE VOW

The Vow Is the kind of movie that requires a package of Kleenex to sit through — a “weepie,” the critics call it. The problem, some of them say, is that it’s not weepie enough. Writes Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times: “This is a movie that leaves you wanting more. To care more, [...]

MOVIE REVIEWS: THE GREY

Box-office forecasters are predicting that The Grey, starring Liam Neeson, will become this weekend’s box office champ. Kyle Smith in the New York Post is not so sure. “It may be too conventional for the art-house crowd, yet too arty for the megaplex. I prefer to call it an unusually reflective blood-and-guts saga,” he writes. [...]

MOVIE REVIEWS: RED TAILS

If, as George Lucas has announced, Red Tails, his take on the all-black Tuskegee Airmen of World War II, turns out to be his last Hollywood movie, he’s going out in a blaze of critical indifference. Wesley Morris, one of the few black film critics for a major publication, concludes his review in the Boston [...]

MOVIE REVIEWS: THE IRON LADY

Meryl Streep is receiving high praise for her performance as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady; the movie itself, not so much. Consider the closing paragraph of Betsy Sharkey’s review in the Los Angeles Times: “What helps elevate the film is the searing insight Streep brings to Thatcher’s aging; she catches [...]

MOVIE REVIEWS: WAR HORSE

Most film critics take a cold, analytical approach to what they see on the screen, and if the movie stirs deep emotions, they are likely to ascribe that reaction to “manipulation” by the director. Such is the case with Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, in both positive and negative reviews, as if manipulation were not the [...]

MOVIE REVIEWS: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE — GHOST PROTOCOL

Tom Cruise, who had been getting a lot of bad press in recent years for everything from jumping on Oprah’s sofa to touting the supposed benefits of Scientology, is finally receiving some printed praise again, thanks to the major newspaper film critics. Most of them marvel at Cruise’s sheer audacity in some of the scenes [...]

MOVIE REVIEWS: SHAME

Steve McQueen’s Shame will not get you into the holiday spirit. “Critics by and large regard the movie as a difficult go — Michael Fassbender portrays Brandon Sullivan, a sex addict who no longer finds pleasurable — but nonetheless an admirable work of cinema craftsmanship. A handful disagree. A.O. Scott in the New York Times [...]

MOVIE REVIEWS: THE ARTIST

The Artist is arguably the most enthusiastically reviewed movie of the year. Other movies may have received a similar amount of praise but not the kind of cheers that this black-and-white, mostly silent movie has garnered. Back in May, when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, Peter Bradshaw of Britain’s Guardian newspaper, wrote: “The [...]

EARLY MOVIE REVIEWS: THE DESCENDANTS

Hoping to excite strong word-of-mouth, Fox Searchlight is opening The Descendants, starring George Clooney, in New York and Los Angeles tonight (Wednesday) in advance of a wide roll-out on Friday (against Breaking Dawn). Early reviews are sterling. Lou Lumenick gives it his only four-star review of the year. It is, he writes, “superbly written, directed, [...]

MOVIE REVIEWS: JACK AND JILL

Adam Sandler may easily be among America’s 1 percent after starring in a record number of films that have grossed more than $100 million. But many critics are betting his latest one, Jack and Jill, won’t make it past that mark. In fact he doesn’t even have 1 percent of the critics on his side. [...]

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