The shadows for “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” fall over the movie and the actors themselves. When did Kevin Costner become an old man? What happened to Keira Knightley’s rise to stardom? Why has a relaunch of Tom Clancy’s heroic CIA analyst fallen into the January dump period, especially when it, at least, is not a disaster? There’s certainly nothing shadowy about the chosen story for this intended reboot. This isn’t the first time

In “August: Osage County,” we enter the story (based on the Tracy Letts play), of the appalling Westons who live in Oklahoma. The disappearance of the patriarch, a poet and a drunk (Sam Sheppard), brings together the members of this spectacularly dysfunctional family. In the stifling heat, they claw and tear each other to pieces, they cuss, yell, and throw at one another’s face awful revelation after awful revelation. Intelligent writing and great ensemble acting make “August” fascinating.

It’s the oldest story in the book: boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. Boy and girl live happily ever after.

The problem? The girl in this instance is a computer, and the boy is the lonely Theodore Twombley (Joaquin Phoenix). Theodore, who spends his days composing love letters for other people, is slogging through the aftermath of a failed marriage when he purchases an artificially intelligent operating system. His drab life, backlit by a vaguely

Middle-earth continues its domination of the silver screen with this latest installment, "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug," the second film centering on the adventures of the hobbit Bilbo and his band of merry men (and dwarves and wizards). Peter Jackson has delivered a terrific film that also has a unique Achilles’s heel. The one weakness in this otherwise highly-entertaining movie is exactly what has made it such

In "American Hustle"’s would-be signature moment con-man Christian Bale shows G-man Bradley Cooper a Rembrandt in a gallery. He explains that it’s really a fake. Who is the better artist, he asks, the original artist or the person who took the time and skill to fake it?

Well, I would say the artist. He is the one who perceived it. He is the one who conceived it. He is the one who summoned the inspiration.

In four unrelated chapters “A Touch of Sin” tells the […]

Paris--Ever since the launching of French television network and film distributor CanalPlus in the early eighties (of which he was a central part) media capitan Pierre Lescure has led the charge in terms of edgy programming and driving audiences' expectations for top-notch entertainment ever higher. Whether it's entertainment or art (or both) and it is destined for the small or big screen or the stage, Lescure has had some hand in it these last three decades. Now, he wants the Cannes president job (2014 marks outgoing president Gilles Jacob's final year at the helm of the world's most famous film festival).

Power grab! Ooh la la ...

Sixty eight year-old Lescure, a businessman who holds stakes in a number of different media holdings, has chaired the jury of the Deauville American film festival

Stasis is ignorance and mobility is enlightenment in T.C. Johnstone's "Rising From Ashes," a documentary about the Rwandan Olympic cycling team which uses the wheel of the bicycle as a metaphor for the way we live, learn, grow and co-exist amidst individual and systemic horrors.

The team's coach, cycling legend Jonathan Boyer (referred to throughout as "Jock"), knows much about how to win a race before being called on to move to Rwanda

In “Nebraska” Omaha-born director Alexander Payne is right back where he belongs. His last film, “The Descendants,” (REVIEW) aimed to capture the secret turmoil of seemingly-zen Hawaiians—misery in paradise—but it registered more like picture-perfect George Clooney sulking through a picture-perfect vacation. Even at its most poignant, the tropical setting made the pathos feel forced. Here, the desolation of the surroundings

PARIS - Abdellatif Kechiche’s new film is well-made, possibly deserving its Palme d’Or at the last Cannes Film Festival, but It. Is. Too. Long. The first hour is breathtaking in its precise description of Adèle (played by the remarkable Adèle Exarchopoulos--PROFILE), adrift in adolescent yearnings and not having found her foothold in the real world, who becomes conscious of her attraction to women especially after she