Matter of Life and Death, A (Stairway to Heaven)

Jerry Springer in ‘Ringmaster,’ directed by Neil Abramson and written by Jon Bernstein, stars Jerry Springer as the host of a daytime talk show very much like “The Jerry Springer Show”—only a disclaimer at the end informs us that this Jerry and that Jerry have nothing to do with one another. It is the downmarket…

It used to be almost a cliché: the toughest teacher you had in high school was always the one you remembered as having given you the most, once you grew up and learned to appreciate it. Nowadays, however, we believe neither in growing up ourselves nor in expecting our kids to grow up. Our kids…

Bait, written by a committee (Andrew Scheinman, Adam Scheinman and Tony Gilroy) and directed by Antoine Fuqua, almost rises to the level of a decent movie, but of course it cannot resist (as what contemporary Hollywood movie can resist?) the temptation to over-egg the pudding. The central character is an appealing ne’er-do-well and petty thief…

Hollywood’s take on the financial crisis of 2008. Guess who gets the blame.

42 Up, the sixth in Michael Apted’s fascinating series of documentaries about a group of English schoolchildren first introduced to us at the age of seven in 1964, is the best yet. In a way this was predictable, since at 42 the sense of youthful expectation in which anything still seems possible has at last…

In Anaconda, Danny (Ice Cube), while he is being pursued up the Amazon by a gigantic, man-eating snake and a homocidal river man, dreams of being back in “civilization” — by which he means “on the L.A. freeways with my cell phone.” Ha! If you’ve got to choose between the giant snake and the river…