Act of Valor

Living Out Loud, written and directed by Richard LaGravenese is a handsome tribute to a charming woman, but it has no idea where it is going. Or rather: it knows where it wants to go, which is in the direction of a romantic rescue, but hasn’t got the nerve to go there. The story concerns…

The Protestant Reformation? Eric Till appears not to have heard of it. But of course that doesn’t stop his Martin Luther from being a hero of our time

In spite of the exertions of a talented cast, it is very hard to warm up to a musical whose view of the human condition is so unremittingly bleak.

What makes Tim Story’s film so good as moral instruction is what makes it, um, not quite so good as a movie.

In the New York Times‘s review of East-West, a Franco-Russian production directed by Régis Wargnier, A.O. Scott noted that, on its release in France last year, the film had been criticized for “its supposed anti-Communism” but that, it seemed to him, “its politics are fairly restrained.” How typical of the New York Times to assume…

Pearl Harbor, written by Randall Wallace and directed by Michael Bay, begins with a visual pun, which is also a leitmotif throughout the film: the impossibly big and gorgeous image of the setting sun. Remember who used to run something called the empire of the rising sun? The movie’s patriotism is almost shocking. Along with…