Film + TV

Doses of cultural pride clash with high-impact lacrosse games in the latest sport underdog story, Crooked Arrows. In order to approve an expansion for the casino he manages, prodigal son Brandon Routh of the Onondaga nation agrees to coach a disorderly high school lacrosse team. Let’s get this out of the way, this is The […]

You’d think a film that starts with the violent separation of mother-fudgin’ continents would have bigger stakes, but Ice Age: Continental Drift isn’t concerned with challenging itself when there’s so many famous people’s voices around. The fourth film in the talking prehistoric mammal franchise sees mastodon Ray Romano separated from wife Queen Latifah by a […]

When you’re trying to endear an audience, soundtracks and montages can detract, not enhance, from the audience’s relationship to the characters on screen, as is the case in The Intouchables, by French writer-director duo Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, and based on a true story. Driss (Omar Sy), a Senegalese man from the projects, is […]

Four stories: all set in Rome and all loosely about celebrity—that, along with a kitschy aesthetic, is all that unites Woody Allen’s latest, To Rome With Love. While funny, some jokes run too long—for example, Leopoldo (Roberto Benigni), an ordinary man, wakes up one day, inexplicably famous (a cute shtick, overworked). The strongest story is […]

Katy Perry’s Part of Me goes about as deep as her costumes, keeping things sparkly and bright. We follow Perry on her world tour for a year, flitting back and forth through her past—her rise to fame from a religious family, her struggles staying signed to a record label—to her present—onstage spectacles and gushy meet […]

Director Colin Trevorrow’s and writer Derek Connolly’s debut feature-length movie is a quirky comedy about a writer for Seattle Magazine, Jeff (Jake M. Johnson) and two interns, Darius (Aubrey Plaza) and Arnau (Karan Soni), who investigate the story behind a classified ad looking for a partner with whom to travel back in time. Darius successfully […]

Moments in Oliver Stone’s pulpy drug caper, Savages, connect with the violence and horror it wants to evoke. But then Blake Lively’s sleepy, surfer-girl narration pops up and any goodwill washes away. Lively, as “O,” brings nearly nothing to her role as lady love to a couple of polyamorous pot-growing buddies (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Taylor […]

It’s likely impossible to not compare this Spider-Man reboot with Sam Raimi’s recent trilogy of films. To their credit, director Marc Webb and star Andrew Garfield do take some admirable swings. The webbing just doesn’t always stick. Garfield plays a Peter Parker that’s more introspective loner than outright dweeb, while Emma Stone is shiny in […]

Boldly going where he’s gone dozens of times before, Tyler Perry dons the fat suit and wig once again for Madea’s Witness Protection. When a federal prosecutor (Perry) needs to hide a mob witness (poor, poor Eugene Levy) he reluctantly sends the New Yorker to his Atlanta aunt, Madea. Routine hijinks on silly white people, […]