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 | Crimson Tie Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
One can be forgiven for not counting The Game -- the annual college football contest between the Harvard Crimson and the Yale Bulldogs -- among 1968’s most memorable events. During a year that witnessed the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the election of Richard Nixon and the escalation of Vietnam War protests, even one of the most exciting finishes in sports history -- Harvard, an apparently hopeless underdog against undefeated Yale, scored an unthinkable 16 points in the final 42 seconds to earn the now-famous tie -- might understandably be overlooked.More |  | Brotherly Love at the Brink Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.
There is nothing truly surprising in [b]The Black Balloon[/b], only deeply affecting riffs on a familiar story.Thomas (Rhys Wakefield) is a typical teenager, handsome, shy around girls, and innocent enough that a peck on the cheek packs the power of a defining moment. His father is a military man, cheerfully gruff but no rigid taskmaster. His very pregnant mother (Toni Collette), though immobilized by her globe-shaped belly, remains the doting queen of the household. And his brother Charlie (Luke Ford) is autistic.More |  | Mad Money Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars.
[b]The International[/b], about a banking system dominated by the interests of murder-minded powerbrokers, is a solid little thriller.More |  | Misadventures in Bizarro World Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Adapted from a dark children’s novella by British author Neil Gaiman and directed by Henry Selick, who played a pivotal role in crafting the look of Tim Burton’s [b]Nightmare Before Christmas[/b], [b]Coraline[/b] is a visual achievement of the highest order, an endlessly inventive spectacle that represents the first stop-motion animation feature ever filmed in 3-D. Judging by the results, it will not be the last.More |  | Geek Chic? Not Exactly Rating: 2 out of 5 stars.
The story of director Kyle Newman’s struggle to bring his [b]Star Wars[/b]-inspired comedy [b]Fanboys[/b] to the screen is almost as compelling as the Rebel Alliance’s bid to derail the Evil Empire.More |  | The City of Love, and Lost Children Rating: 2 out of 5 stars.
If you’ve seen the commercials for [b]Taken[/b], the preposterous new thriller from Luc Besson’s EuropaCorp production company, chances are good that you’re already familiar with the finer points of its story. Liam Neeson plays a former CIA agent whose daughter is kidnapped by a gang of sex traffickers, leaving him to wage a one-man war on those responsible.More |  | Aliens and Vikings and Bears, Oh My! Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars.
Those yearning for a “sci-mythic” take on the [b]Beowulf[/b] legend may raise their cups of mead to screenwriters Dirk Blackman and Howard McCain, whose decade-in-the-making tale of eighth-century Vikings facing off against alien predators has finally arrived on the big screen. [b]Outlander[/b], the undeniably silly fruit of their labors, is a bizarre pastiche of B-movie genres and clichés, but it’s not without its feather-brained charms.More |  | A Matrimonial Miscalculation Rating: 1 out of 5 stars.
It is a matter of unfortunate timing that Anne Hathaway’s latest trip to the chapel follows so closely on the heels of her Golden Globe-nominated turn in [b]Rachel Getting Married[/b]. If anything positive can be said for [b]Bride Wars[/b], which finds her wading through a cesspool of infantile banality and sitcom clichés, it is that Hathaway is the movie’s greatest and only asset.More |  | A Showdown for the Ages Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars.
When British talk-show host David Frost first approached Richard Nixon about participating in a series of televised interviews that would touch on everything from the Vietnam War to Watergate, the disgraced former president wasn’t the only one looking to rehabilitate his image.More |  | Some Kind of Monster Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
[b]The Reader[/b] has been criticized as being an excessively staid (or British, if you prefer) drama about a man and woman emotionally cut off from one another by the Holocaust and its aftermath. And while I understand those criticisms -- this is a movie about people who are aloof even in the best of times, oddly impenetrable types whose passions are evident only during the time they spend together -- there is nothing tepid about the conflict raging in the soul of Michael Berg.More |
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