Feb. 26 may be the Night of Silence. Everyone knows about The Artist—its many accolades, the likelihood it will take the top prize at the Academy Awards. But four out of the five films nominated for the Best Animated Short category are also silent or speak the cartoon equivalent, gibberish. Needless to say, if a [...]

Let’s get real, Oscar prognosticators: The Artist is a confection. It’s a novel confection, yes, a silent black-and-white movie in an increasingly noisy Avatar world. But awarding it a Best Picture statuette would be a Shakespeare in Love-size mistake.
Writer-director Michel Hazanavicius’ throwback film tells the story of George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), a handsome 1920s [...]

Good but unnecessary. Fans of the excellent, original The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo are unlikely to cozy up to the much-ballyhooed, Americanized David Fincher version, though it technically hits all the marks of Stieg Larsson’s blockbuster novel and does so with all the brooding chilliness of a typical Fincher.
It kicks off with Karen O [...]

A lot of folks are talking today about an email exchange, leaked to IndieWire, in which Hollywood super producer Scott Rudin rebukes New Yorker film critic David Denby for reviewing The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo ahead of its Dec. 13 embargo date. Over the weekend—at exactly the same time, in fact!—I received a similar [...]

The genius of the Muppets has always been the show’s ability to cut its gee-whizness with winking self-deprecation and a hint of cynicism. The somewhat insufferable Kermit the Frog has his rainbow-connectedness karate-chopped by an always-insufferable but realist Miss Piggy. Fozzie Bear and his terrible jokes are heckled by cranky balcony-dwellers Statler and Waldorf. And [...]

In the past few years, Clint Eastwood has been more successful coaxing terrific performances out of A-list actors than terrific movies out of mediocre scripts. It started with with 2009’s Invictus (Matt Damon, Morgan Freeman) and continued with last year’s Hereafter (Damon again). Now there’s J. Edgar, a limp, snooze-worthy biopic about FBI director J. [...]

The people highlighted in Showcase 12 have problems. Some are as trivial as a scheduling conflict; others are pathological or criminal. The shorts themselves are a fragmented bunch, with a few standing strong but many in need of a little doctoring.
My Friend Peter: A Beaver-esque tale about a disturbed (but amusingly so!) guy who connects [...]

Sad sacks and victims dominate DC Shorts' Showcase 1. I’d advise you to bring your tissues, but none of these films are strong enough to warrant tears.
Long Story Short: A little person falls for his tall improv partner; the awkwardness is palpable, their connection is not.
The Man in 813: This three-minute film about 24 hours [...]

Boy, chimps sure are pissed at humans. At least that's the case in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a prequel to the Planet of the Apes series that portrays how those simians got so smart in the first place. Though the blowout is fierce, its origins are quite pedestrian, really: It was just [...]

With Indiana Jones, James Bond, and the man behind Iron Man, you might expect Cowboys & Aliens to be the most entertaining of mash-ups, part True Grit, part Super 8. What you get instead is closer to a disaster flick in the worst sense of the term.
It required an astonishing five screenwriters and director Jon [...]