The Raven

Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem provides the title for The Raven, but the real inspiration seems to lie more in a combination of Sherlock Holmes and “CSI.” It’s a mid-19th century detective story that features the author himself as the sleuth unraveling the mystery, a bizarre concept that works for a while, until the script [...]

The Pirates: Band of Misfits

Although their roots remain in the rudimentary stop-motion world that put them on the map, the folks at Aardman Animations have expanded their technological repertoire. Fortunately, a change in the process doesn’t equal a compromise in style for the British studio behind the Wallace and Gromit franchise and such charming features as Chicken Run and [...]

Bernie

Say what you will about the hit-or-miss quality of Richard Linklater’s career, but the guy seems to do his best work in Texas. The filmmaker who rose to prominence with Austin-based cult favorites Slacker and Dazed and Confused during the 1990s knows how to portray that combination of small-town quirks and goofy Western charm that [...]

Capsule reviews for April 27

Elles A typically strong performance by Juliette Binoche can’t rescue this French erotic drama in which she plays a journalist writing a magazine article on student prostitutes in Paris. However, as she interviews two subjects (Joanna Kulig and Anais Demoustier) about their work, she begins to let her guard down and ask questions about exploring [...]

The Lucky One

Post-traumatic stress disorder can be one of the most serious and one of the most underappreciated afflictions stemming from war, whether it’s soldiers dealing with mental scars from the battlefield or families on the homefront coping with the loss of a loved one. Leave it to author Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook) to trivialize the condition [...]

Think Like a Man

Plenty of ensemble cast members get their individual chances to shine in Think Like a Man, but the actor who’s got to be happiest with the finished product must be one with very little screen time. That would be comedian Steve Harvey, whose self-help relationship book Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man provides [...]

Marley

Even non-fans tend to remember Bob Marley’s influence on music as a reggae pioneer. But even reggae aficionados might not know the details of Marley’s life behind the scenes. That’s why Marley is such a definitive documentary of its subject, who died of cancer in 1981 at age 36. The big-screen biography is a tribute [...]

Capsule reviews for April 20

The Moth Diaries This gothic, low-budget Twilight rip-off takes place at a posh all-female boarding school, where classmates Rebecca (Sarah Bolger) and Lucie (Sarah Gadon) have their friendship tested by Ernessa (Lily Cole), a mysterious new girl whose withdrawn nature might stem from the recent suicide of her father, or it might be caused by [...]

The Cabin in the Woods

With its generic title and abundance of slasher-film clichés, The Cabin in the Woods seems like the latest horror film off the assembly line. That’s exactly what director Drew Goddard and writer-producer Joss Whedon want you to think. Instead, their stylish collaboration is a subversive bait-and-switch of the most pleasant variety, using genre conventions to [...]

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