It's always energizing to see an actor give a breakthrough performance -- which is something that you get from Ari Graynor in Lucky, opening in limited release Friday.

As the 30th anniversary of the start of the AIDS epidemic arrives, it's instructive to note that, even today, there are still those benighted places -...

We have now come to the end of a decade-long magical adventure that may constitute the most ambitious feat of both literary and cinematic story-telling in memory, with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2.

So - if the movie year had ended June 30 and we had to choose the best films of 2011 from the releases that hit American screens since Jan. 1, which o...

Most viewers will get some laughs from Horrible Bosses -- and they may not think it's horrible. But saying it's not horrible is another way of saying that this movie is consistently disappointing.

"It was the '70s," one of the participants says at one point in the documentary Project Nim, about an experiment involving a chimpanzee and human lang...

Movies are show. Theater is tell. But The Ledge, opening in limited release tomorrow (7/8/11) and currently available on VOD, is essentially a two-h...

When it comes to stories that bear transposition to varying eras and settings, Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954) seems a prime example of a plot t...

I was bemused when Dan Kois wrote his "aw shucks" piece in the New York Times in April about how, sometimes, he just can't get with the program when i...

You have to give filmmaker Azazel Jacobs credit for fighting the formula in Terri, a tale of a teen outsider and his strange relationship with a sympathetic vice principal.

Larry Crowne is a stealth comedy, low-key but consistently satisfying. It's a movie that focuses on the power of positivity without getting melodramatic about it.

Nobody's perfect, least of all The Perfect Host, a thriller that quickly spins out of control, despite a daring performance by David Hyde Pierce in the title role.

Why don't we create a luxury tax for Hollywood, comparable to the one Major League Baseball invokes whenever a team tries to buy itself a pennant by stocking up on expensive star players.

No one is going to be putting The Best and the Brightest on any 10-best lists -- but if you're looking for a comedy that offers a handful of bawdy, vulgar laughs, look no further.

If the title of Bad Teacher calls to mind Bad Santa, the resonance is deliberate: Here is a comedy full of inappropriate humor about someone filling a familiar role who couldn't be further from the figure of benevolent authority we expect.

Cars 2 wins the award for the most unnecessary sequel of the year -- at least until someone makes another Jonah Hex movie. Yes, yes, I know - the 200...

Talk about mixed signals. First the New York Times runs a story about how the studios are losing faith in 3D as a money-maker. Which is good news -- ...

Imagine penguins sledding on their stomachs down a slurry of spilled ice buckets in the middle of a black-tie charity event. If that sounds like a lot of laughs, then you're either a six-year-old or the ideal adult audience member for this movie.

This slight coming-of-age tale works better than it has any right to, thanks to the performances by the young actors and several of the supporting cast.

There's dramatic movie violence -- and then there's sadistic, nihilistic movie violence. If you've got a taste for the latter, Kidnapped should be right up your alley.

Buck is as engrossing as a documentary can be, a film that will touch you emotionally even as you watch the action in fascination.

The documentary, opening in limited release this Friday, uses what has become America's most important print media outlet to tell the story of the collapse of print media in the Internet age.

The pleasures of The Trip are subtle and absurd. The humor is found in the moment by a pair of witty performers who cast a gimlet eye on everything they encounter -- including each other.

Bill Haney's film, a documentary that looks at the impending flattening of the final mountain in a West Virginia area of Appalachia, is stark in its facts and unapologetic about its viewpoint: Coal is killing the planet.

Last week I saw Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life. Then I saw Lady Gaga on SNL. And I had the same reaction to both: Why are there so many people out there willing to declare this stuff great art?