Film, TV & Streaming

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Rated PG-13.

This may be a strange time to release a thriller about the dangers of corrupt law enforcement, but Training Day — with no explosions, no cheap thrills, no international conspiracies — is about as distant from current East Coast realities as possible. Still, that doesn’t mean that it qualifies as…

Serendipity already feels archaic, like some dusty relic that’s been unearthed from an antique store attic and polished off for display. It reeks of quaint and cute, from its gauzy panoramas of Manhattan at Christmastime to its tattered plot of lovers bound by destiny to its scenes of travelers casually…

It’s generally considered a violation of the unwritten code of film criticism to reveal anything that happens more than halfway into a movie, let alone near the end. But these are unusual circumstances, and anyone attending Stephen Frears’ new film Liam this weekend should really be forewarned. If you think…

The cynic may notice only how Hearts in Atlantis plays like a Stephen King best-of compilation, a reheating of familiar stories and favorite themes. At times, it feels so much like Stand by Me — with its nostalgic, flashback tale of cherubs and bullies accompanied by sad and weary narration…

Combine teenage angst with suburban emptiness and you’ve got a movie formula with an appreciable advantage over some other current movie formulas — particularly in the eyes of those who believe the American family has disintegrated and most of us are headed for eternal damnation. This is not to say…

On September 13, at 11:30 a.m., Bryce Zabel was to have met with USA Network executives about a miniseries he was pitching to the cable outlet. Zabel, creator of such television shows as Dark Skies and The Crow: Stairway to Heaven, had the conference on his calendar for weeks. But,…

After the next few apocalypses, hundreds of thousands of years from the moment we clever humans smugly call “now,” the great philosopher-scientists will gather to assemble the remaining traces of our present time and species. In particular, these evolved beings will find fascination in the structure of our crania, which…

Faced with yet another sports movie in which lovably troubled kids triumph over adversity, it’s easier to scoff and grumble than to feel even partially uplifted. So let’s do it — let’s scoff and grumble. At least for a moment. In Brian Robbins’ Hardball, a degenerate gambler who owes bent-nosed,…

A year after Cameron Crowe climbed back aboard the tour bus for one last spin through rock’s golden days of giddy hedonism and phony heroism comes a film set a decade later, in the mid-1980s, when the parties got harder, the music louder and the musicians prettier. The world of…

The indie Let It Snow was originally titled Snow Days. Both titles are terrible — they suggest either a schmaltzy ’40s-era holiday musical or else a kiddy comedy from Nickelodeon. The movie is, rather, a derivative but likable romantic comedy, sort of a bus-and-truck When Harry Met Sally . …

Directed by. Screenplay by. With..

Cuddly outsider #63178D, please step forward. Well, my goodness, look at you! You are so alternative, so fringe, so punk! So artsy and alienated! So utterly aimless and oozing with angst! Tell us, girl, what ought we to call you? Edwina Scissorhands?That’s one easily justified reaction a viewer may take…

Written and directed by. With..

Anybody with siblings knows that, while birth order isn’t the determining factor in how we develop, it certainly provides a convenient excuse for any number of undesirable character traits. The eldest child can be insufferably responsible and bossy, lording it over his or her younger siblings, or wild and crazy,…

Woody Allen’s latest romp through Old New York combines (among other things) a skirt-chasing insurance investigator with the charm of a rodent, a wisecracking Vassar grad who takes no guff and a nightclub hypnotist in a sequined turban who doubles as a major jewel thief. The year is 1940. The…

Beware the filmmaker who looks through the camera’s lens and sees only himself on the other side, blowing kisses. He’s the fool who confuses “personal vision” with “jacking off,” and he’ll try every time to convince you there’s something meaningful and imaginative in the shallow and hackneyed. He is so…

There is something fairly amusing about this title, Apocalypse Now Redux. Think about it: Prophetic Disclosure Presently Shows Up Again Newfangled. Of course, in the 10 years since the release of the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, we’ve been taught to revere the legend of Francis Ford Coppola…

Times certainly have changed. Twenty years ago, a musical about an East German transsexual rock singer would have premièred in one of New York’s off-off Broadway theaters or cabarets, run for a couple of weeks and remained the pleasant memory of a select few. But when John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig…

During this cinematic Summer of Dumb, it would be all too easy to celebrate half-assed cleverness as a virtue, especially when proffered by Bobby and Peter Farrelly, who elevated the gross-out to an art form (or, more likely, fart form) in Kingpin and There’s Something About Mary. Osmosis Jones, one…

It was about two years ago that there was real hope for the horror movie coming once again due for a decent revival. The Blair Witch Project made people remember how to fear the unknown, and remakes of The Haunting and House on Haunted Hill promised a return to the…

The most telling scene in Rush Hour 2 comes during the closing-credits montage of outtakes that have become the most enjoyable part of Jackie Chan’s Hollywood outings. Chris Tucker — the poor man’s Eddie Murphy, who now pockets more than the real thing per picture — and Chan have just…