The spark between two soon-to-be lovers ignites inside a Latin nightclub in New York City, as the pair dance with clumsy playfulness to the Spanish romantic ballad "Un Velero Llamado Liberta…
Dustin Hoffman and Leo Woodall make quite the pair in "Tuner." Hoffman's character, veteran piano technician Harry Horowitz, is losing his hearing, while his people-shy apprentice (played by…
William Shakespeare left no instructions as to the right way future dramatists should tell "Hamlet." We have only the text, which reveals fresh insights each time someone new recites it. Wit…
More than once, incensed characters accuse the mad doctor of being the true "monster" in Guillermo del Toro's "Frankenstein" " not to be confused with Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein," even tho…
By some perverse coincidence, this year at the Telluride Film Festival, there were three movies about William Shakespeare's "Hamlet," but it's the one spelled with the "N" that confronts the…
In an industry where even "Weird Al" Yankovic has a movie about his life story, it's about time the Boss got his due. But "Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere" isn't just another assembly-l…
No city on earth feels more like the mythical land of Oz than Las Vegas, with its tacky towers and the hordes of dreamers who make the trek, desperately hoping to have their wishes granted "…
There have been 36 years, roughly 40 million divorces and a seismic cultural shift (or several) since Danny DeVito's dark, down-with-love comedy "The War of the Roses" pitted Kathleen Turner…
The title's a problem, but it would be a crying shame to let that discourage you from seeing "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight," which is precisely the sort of intelligent, human-scale adu…
Just as "My Beautiful Laundrette" launched a little-known English actor named Daniel Day-Lewis, the London-set "Unicorns" spotlights up-and-coming talent Ben Taylor (whose minor roles in "Bo…
Of Paolo Genovese's 2016 Italian phenom "Perfect Strangers," the original Variety review warned "remakes will be rampant," and sure enough, Guinness made it official last fall: The hooky dra…
Some people simply aren't made to be mothers. That idea, which runs counter to social expectations in nearly every culture on earth, has inspired a provocative strand of unconventional famil…
Whereas Hollywood has told and retold "A Star Is Born" so many times as to make trite its plot " of a preternaturally gifted young female singer whose career is simultaneously encouraged and…
So much goes unspoken in "Broken Voices," Czech director OndÅ™ej ProvaznÃk's nuanced retelling of the notorious sex scandal that rocked the Bambini di Praga girls choir, rechristened C…
When George Orwell published "Animal Farm" 80 years ago, he intended the book " in which barnyard animals rebel against their human overlords to create an egalitarian society, only to slide …
Witticist-lyricist Lorenz Hart would cringe at the pun, but "Blue Moon" is nothing if not a funny valentine to the tortured (closeted, Jewish, alcoholic, diminutive) songwriter who died in 1…
Boundaries are constantly blurring in "Kiss of the Spider Woman," the revolutionary mid-'80s film that became a Kander and Ebb musical, and that cunningly (and stunningly) morphs back to the…
In "The Wizard of Oz," there can be no doubt which witch is the worst witch: That would be the one with the army of flying monkeys, who melts upon contact with water. But in "Wicked," the gr…
A hundred years ago, before email and social media found ways to slap us in the face with unsolicited obscenity on a daily basis, the quiet English town of Littlehampton was scandalized by a…
All for one and … two for all? In a bold move, French film studio Pathé (together with partners in Germany, Spain and Belgium) bet nearly $80 million on an all-star, double-barreled adapt…
As a critic, I'm always looking for a fresh challenge, which is one reason I took up writing about theater: It still has the capacity to scare me. I've reviewed nearly 1,700 movies in my tim…
If you've ever seen Mike Birbiglia before, whether on stage or screen (or a couple months back, filling in for Jimmy Kimmel), then "The Old Man and the Pool" feels like catching up with an o…
The trick of stage acting comes in playing the same thing every night as if it were happening for the first time, right there in front of the audience's eyes. But once-controversial American…
Debuting on opening night of the Cannes Film Festival a full year after it was originally expected to appear, "Annette" arrives on a pedestal from which it's too easily toppled. This latest …
Perhaps it's time for another meeting between officials from Israel and Palestine like the series of off-the-books negotiations that took place in Oslo, Norway, back in 1993. Those sessions …