Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is not a good movie, but it is made by filmmakers with panache who have some good ideas and a lot of bad ones, but in any case are giving it all they’ve got.
Cyrus Nowrasteh’s The Stoning of Soraya M shines a pale, narrow beam of light at a real atrocity that, tragically, continues to play out in certain corners of the world. Highlighting the powerlessness and peril of women under a system that requires them, if accused of infidelity, to prove their innocence or die, but will not punish their husbands unless their guilt is proved, the film’s spotlight exposes a barbaric injustice while for the most part leaving the surrounding social and cultural context in darkness.
There’s an ambitious modesty to Duncan Jones’s debut film Moon, a smart, existential science-fiction drama with one onscreen actor that runs 97 minutes and goes nowhere more exotic than our planet’s natural satellite.
French director Olivier Assayas’s Summer Hours opens with a glimpse into a world that has already passed away, though not all the characters realize it yet.
(Criterion Special Edition) Starkly existential, boldly poetic, slow and grim, Ingmar Bergman’s great classic The Seventh Seal has haunted film aficionados, baffled and bored college students, inspired innumerable parodists, and challenged both believers and unbelievers for nearly half a century.
(Blu-ray) Refreshingly, the film doesn’t resort to having the Russians sneer and swagger or belittle our team, as many sports movies (even the generally well-done The Rookie) do to get the audience rooting against them. … The Russians are simply the other team, the competition. We root for Team USA not because the other players are despicable, but because they are David and the Soviets are Goliath, and also because they are our team, the same as Yankees or Red Sox fans.
(Blu-ray) The Greatest Game Ever Played is perhaps the most visually and emotionally dynamic film ever made about a game of golf — perhaps the most visually and emotionally dynamic possible film about a game of golf.