It’s not uncommon for me to get into discussions about celebrities that go something like this: Him: Hey, you’ve heard of Mr. Big Name [a world-famous icon of masculinity], ...

Summer blockbuster movies often allow the popular imagination to engage metaphorically with topics that aren’t discussed honestly on the editorial page—topics such as IQ, ...

Perhaps no movie this year generates more concussive laughter from audiences than The Guard. This low-budget, highbrow Irish comedy stars redheaded character actor Brendan Gleeson ...

Project Nim is a critically praised documentary about Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee who was the subject of one of those attempts to teach American Sign Language to an ape, a fad that ...

I never thought I’d say this about a Harry Potter movie, but the eighth and culminating installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, should have been a good ...

I had long wondered why critics loathe the Transformers movies about giant alien robots more than they hate any other summer blockbuster series. On the other hand, I’d never ...

Watching the misanthropic comedy Bad Teacher, I was reminded of how my late father-in-law, who supplemented his careers as a tuba player and union boss with a day job in the ...

X-Men: First Class is the fifth screen adaptation since 2000 of the Marvel Comics series. What’s the appeal of these Homo superior mutants whose superpowers cause them to be ...

The movie industry cares only about money, not art. Right? Yet Terrence Malick’s four-decade-long career demonstrates how much money and talent film folk will lavish on an ...

Satire is a reactionary art form powered by contempt for the present. Although Woody Allen, now 75, has always espoused conventionally liberal views, he's one of the last figures ...

Bridesmaids, the first female buddy comedy from producer Judd Apatow (Knocked Up and countless others over the last half-decade), stars Kristen Wiig, that passive-aggressive ...

Movie folks think they are better than you or me, and sometimes they are right. Jodie Foster, for example, isn"€™t the world's best director, but she may be the bravest. Who ...

Atlas Shrugged: Part I is the most universally despised movie of 2011, but I liked it. Critics hate this adaptation of Ayn Rand's 1957 cult novel for predictable ideological ...

Robert Redford's courtroom drama The Conspirator recounts the 1865 trial by a military tribunal of Confederate partisan Mary Surratt for her murky role in John Wilkes Booth's plot ...

In Win Win, Paul Giamatti (perhaps best known for 2004's Sideways) plays a nice-guy lawyer, Mike Flaherty, who also coaches his old high school's wrestling squad. His family-law ...

The latest movie adaptation of Jane Eyre is slowly rolling out nationally via art-house theaters, but the plot of Charlotte Brontë's three-volume novel remains wonderfully ...