Departures is nakedly manipulative. Its director, Yôjirô Takita, doesn’t show any sensitivity to tone or character. He aims to wring tears out of us by any means necessary, underlining every emotion with a blatancy that borders on shamelessness. Not content to let a scene play out, he cues big musical swells on the soundtrack and [...]

Ghost stories. They have haunted many genres – horror-slash-supernatural, comedy, romance,  fantasy. They have been told to us by friends and parents around campfires, or during blackouts, with “Ooooo” sound effects and torch-lighting. They have been around almost as long as we have been writing stories. (The ancient Epic of Gilgamesh – one of the [...]

Hot Fuzz is the type of movie that offers up something for just about anyone, though unlike many such films it excels at multitasking. Easily classified as a comedy, an action movie, a mystery and a satire, it is an exceptionally well-rendered film and an instant classic.
The film centers on supercop Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg), [...]

“Are you my friend now?” Connor (Michael Fassbinder) asks Mia (Katie Jarvis) about mid-way through Fish Tank. It’s a fair question, given how turbulent her emotions are, particularly where he’s been concerned. One moment she likes him, the next she’s lashing out at him; she’s 15, it’s a tough time. Making it tougher is her [...]

From its title, you’d immediately expect Women Without Men to be a feminist tract, and that’s what you get — sort of. Set amidst the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh in the early 1950s, it tells the story of four women, each oppressed by men in some way, and how they [...]

I wish I could write the way Nicole Holofcener writes. I wish I could write the way she directs too. It’s sometimes difficult to articulate the feelings and motivations of her characters in Please Give — they contain layers of often contradictory emotions — but they elicit our immediate empathy. There is a scene, and [...]

Neil Marshall’s The Descent is the kind of movie that makes converts out of people who don’t normally gravitate towards the horror genre. It not only delivers on the scares but does so by constructing a compelling story around its gory set pieces. It is truly a film that transcends the boundaries of genre and [...]

Perhaps because I know Sweden mostly as the home of Ingmar Bergman and Let the Right One In, I was expecting something different from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It shapes up as an old-fashioned Agatha Christie-style mystery about two dogged, mismatched detectives going through a cold case to uncover hidden family secrets and [...]

The Stoning of Soraya M. begins with a quote: “Don’t act like a hypocrite, who thinks he can conceal his wiles while loudly quoting the Koran;” and then proceeds to explore a situation in which the Koran becomes little more than a tool to oppress and punish. It is a film with a strong point [...]

Director Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s children’s book Where the Wild Things Are is subdued and beautiful, intelligent about the emotions of a boy from a broken home but clear and direct in expressing them. It features sublime cinematography by Lance Acord and production design by K.K. Barrett, who create a visual landscape that [...]