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Items by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
NYT > Movie Reviews
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Movie Review | 'The Dukes': Rotten Tomatoes
Posted: November 14th, 2008, 11:15am EST by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
“The Dukes” tastes like pasta sauce that has sat on the shelf long after the expiration date on the can.
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Movie Review | 'How About You': Ready for a Spring Thaw: Bickering, Controlling Old Folks With Frozen Souls
Posted: November 14th, 2008, 2:46am EST by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
A good scolding and a toke on a joint: that’s all it takes to turn the curmudgeonly old folks in “How About You” into goofy pussycats.
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Movie Review | 'Role Models': Those Darn Kidults! The Menace of Eternal Youth
Posted: November 6th, 2008, 10:09pm EST by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Judd Apatow neither wrote nor directed “Role Models.” But he might as well have.
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Movie Review | 'Gardens of the Night': Predators and Young Prey in a World Gone Sinister
Posted: November 6th, 2008, 10:09pm EST by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
“Gardens of the Night” is a harrowing story of kidnapping and forced child prostitution that conjures a world entirely populated by predators and prey.
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Movie Review | 'The Guitar': Shopping a Life Away
Posted: November 6th, 2008, 7:17pm EST by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
“The Guitar” is an arty parable that suggests a New York bohemian variation on the odious “Bucket List.”
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Movie Review | 'Dear Zachary': A Provocative Story of Loss
Posted: October 31st, 2008, 12:45am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
It is impossible not to be fired up by Kurt Kuenne’s incendiary cri de coeur, “Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father.”
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Movie Review | 'My Name Is Bruce': The Evil Dumb
Posted: October 31st, 2008, 12:42am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
In “My Name Is Bruce,” a silly horror comedy that only a cultist could love, Bruce Campbell, the star of countless B-movie thrillers, mercilessly spoofs himself.
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Movie Review | 'Passengers': Lost Luggage Is the Least of Their Worries
Posted: October 25th, 2008, 12:34am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
“Passengers” is a supernatural thriller so mechanically inept and lacking in suspense that it doesn’t even pass muster as lowbrow Halloween-ready entertainment.
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Movie Review | 'High School Musical 3: Senior Year': Omigosh, Real Guys Love Sports and Musical Theater
Posted: October 24th, 2008, 12:24am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
How lovely the American high school experience might be if it offered even a smidgen of the euphoria in “High School Musical 3: Senior Year.”
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Movie Review | 'Stranded': When Survival Hinged on Team Spirit
Posted: October 22nd, 2008, 1:55pm EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Gonzalo Arijón’s documentary “Stranded” offers an incontrovertible argument for the necessity of team spirit in the face of catastrophe.
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Movie Review | 'Flash of Genius': An Everyman Inventor Fights the Detroit Goliaths
Posted: October 3rd, 2008, 12:29am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
“Flash of Genius” is a doggedly workmanlike variation of an old story: the lone crusader doing battle with the big bad establishment.
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Movie Review | 'Humboldt County': Waiting to Inhale on the Lost Coast
Posted: October 3rd, 2008, 12:20am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
So much pot is smoked in the agreeable drama “Humboldt County” that you may come away from it with a contact high.
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Movie Review | 'Religulous': Believers, Skeptics and a Pool of Sitting Ducks
Posted: October 1st, 2008, 12:08am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
“Religulous” is a film that aims for laughs, not a scientific survey of the roots of faith.
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Movie Review | 'Choke': Heimlich Maneuvers on the Way to Self
Posted: September 26th, 2008, 12:56am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
To visit the absurdist world of “Choke” requires that you dive through the looking glass into a labyrinth where personal identity is fluid.
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Movie Review | 'August Evening': Immigrant Seeks Work, Gratitude and Future
Posted: September 4th, 2008, 11:16pm EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
“August Evening” explores the strained family ties among illegal immigrants from Mexico and their children living in various parts of Texas.
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Movie Review | 'The Pool': Another World, Just Over the Hedge
Posted: September 2nd, 2008, 11:58pm EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
“The Pool” takes a look at the lives of the haves and the someday might haves in Goa.
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Movie Review | 'I Served the King of England': Hot Dogs to Haute Cuisine, Then Back Down Again
Posted: August 29th, 2008, 1:22pm EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
There is hardly a moment in this film in which you are not aware that its absurdist view of the human condition was shaped by traumatic 20th-century events.
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Film: Serious Pleasures: Season’s Sweet Spots
Posted: August 21st, 2008, 11:11pm EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
A look at 10 of the best art films this summer, several of which portray an unjust world in which ordinary people are at the mercy of the rich and powerful.
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Movie Review | 'The Rocker': Middle-Aged Heavy Metal Drummer Meets Under-Age Band
Posted: August 19th, 2008, 11:24pm EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Watching Rainn Wilson gyrate in “The Rocker,” you can’t help wondering if Mr. Wilson is inhabiting a role that was originally turned down by Jack Black.
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Film: Sex (and Love and Death): Woody’s World Steams Up
Posted: August 19th, 2008, 11:01pm EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
The racing erotic pulse of “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” is a development that has seldom been seen in Woody Allen’s work.
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Movie Review | 'Anita O’Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer': Fraught Life of a Cast-Iron Songstress
Posted: August 14th, 2008, 10:58pm EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
The portrait of Anita O’Day that emerges in this documentary is of a woman who always lived by her own rules.
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Movie Review | 'Henry Poole Is Here': When You Plan to Die Alone, Prepare for Lots of Company
Posted: August 14th, 2008, 10:58pm EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
With characters named Esperanza, Dawn and Patience, “Henry Poole Is Here” traffics in the kind of inspirational kitsch that only a true believer could swallow.
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Movie Review | 'The Romance of Astrea and Celadon': Shepherds, Nymphs, Despair and Love
Posted: August 13th, 2008, 11:14pm EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
The nymphs and druids who frolic through “The Romance of Astrea and Celadon” occupy mythological space between Shakespeare and Greek mythology.
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Movie Review: A Simple Country Soul Pushed Past His Limits
Posted: August 7th, 2008, 10:18pm EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
“Red” imagines a world in which good and evil are clear-cut, and absolute justice is worth pursuing despite heavy collateral damage.
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Movie Review | 'The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2': Four Jills in Jeans (One Pair) Go to College, Find Romance (or Not), Stay Connected
Posted: August 6th, 2008, 12:22am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
This is the movie equivalent of being patted on the shoulder by an encouraging high school guidance counselor and assured that you are doing just fine.
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Movie Review | 'Garden Party': Lost, Lonely Souls Adrift, Randomly Crossing Paths
Posted: July 11th, 2008, 1:06am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
“Garden Party” is a low-rent answer to Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts.”
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Movie Review | 'The Stone Angel': A Tenacious Matriarch Who Won’t Go Quietly
Posted: July 11th, 2008, 1:03am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
“The Stone Angel” is a film of tightly assembled bits and pieces that don’t fit comfortably together despite clever dashes of magical realism connecting past and present.
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Movie Review | 'Days and Clouds': Hard Look at Tough Times for an Italian Marriage
Posted: July 11th, 2008, 12:46am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Silvio Soldini’s film “Days and Clouds” suggests that Italy’s middle class is as much under siege as that of the United States.
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Movie Review | 'Kabluey': Land of the Meek, and Home of the Deeply Blue
Posted: July 3rd, 2008, 11:09pm EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
“Kabluey” is a bittersweet indie comedy whose hapless protagonist spends a good part of the movie waddling along the side of a highway in a blue foam-rubber suit.
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Movie Review | 'Holding Trevor': Desperately Seeking Sex and Identity, With Snark
Posted: July 3rd, 2008, 10:41pm EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
“Holding Trevor,” a portrait of 20-something gay men and their straight friends, is a joyless exploration of middle-class deadbeats.
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Movie Review | 'Tell No One': Snared in a Dark Labyrinth When His Wife Disappears
Posted: July 2nd, 2008, 10:08am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Guillaume Canet’s delicious contemporary thriller “Tell No One” is “Vertigo” meets “The Fugitive” by way of “The Big Sleep.” That is meant as high praise.
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Movie Review | 'Trumbo': When an Eloquent Voice Was Stilled in Hollywood
Posted: June 30th, 2008, 11:20pm EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Peter Askin’s stirring documentary “Trumbo” gives you reasons to cheer but also to weep.
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Movie Review | 'Finding Amanda': A Gambler Goes to Sin City in Search of Atonement
Posted: June 27th, 2008, 2:20am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Set mostly in Las Vegas, “Finding Amanda” offers a vision of confused Americans losing their already shaky bearings in the world’s gaudiest honky-tonk.
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Movie Review | 'Full Grown Men': He’ll Hold His Breath Until You Call Him a Man
Posted: June 24th, 2008, 11:24pm EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
The candy-colored “Full Grown Men” wants to be a kind of anti-“Wizard of Oz” for a culture inundated with toys and toons.
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Movie Review | 'War, Inc.': A Hit Man in a War Zone That Could Easily Be Iraq
Posted: May 23rd, 2008, 2:33pm EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
The zany, nihilistic “War, Inc.” is gonzo moviemaking with a bleeding heart.
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Movie Review | 'Sangre de Mi Sangre': A Teenager’s Betrayal in Brooklyn
Posted: May 16th, 2008, 11:29am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Although “Sangre de Mi Sangre” exhibits a heartfelt connection with illegal immigrants, its myriad inconsistencies and strained plotting are frustrating.
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Movie Review | 'My Father My Lord': Another Abraham’s Story, With a Different Ending
Posted: May 16th, 2008, 10:56am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
“My Father My Lord” observes the severe family life of an ultra-Orthodox rabbi.
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Movie Review: When Selling a Soul, Consider the Price
Posted: May 16th, 2008, 12:47am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Christian Petzold’s enigmatic thriller “Yella” offers a surreal X-ray vision of cutthroat capitalism in 21st-century Germany.
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Movie Review | 'Made of Honor': My Best Friend’s Big Fat (Shouldn’t Happen) Scottish Wedding
Posted: May 1st, 2008, 11:29pm EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
The romantic comedy “Made of Honor” adds tart satirical flavors to a cotton-candy formula without sabotaging the sugar rush. -
Movie Review | 'XXY': Confronting the Perils of Puberty Squared
Posted: May 1st, 2008, 11:28pm EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
The moody, surreal “XXY” explores the world of Alex, an intersex teenager navigating the treacherous emotional and hormonal rapids of uncertain gender. -
Movie Review | '“Then She Found Me': The Biological Clock Is Ticking, the Cause for Much Alarm
Posted: April 27th, 2008, 11:35pm EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
“Then She Found Me,” a serious comedy, is more impressive for what it refuses to do than for its modest accomplishment. -
Film: High-Wire Act for a Film Festival
Posted: April 26th, 2008, 2:51pm EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
The balancing of art and commerce at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival has tilted more toward art. -
Movie Review | 'Up the Yangtze': A Visit to Old China, Before It Drowns
Posted: April 25th, 2008, 1:44am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
“Up the Yangtze” is an astonishing documentary of culture clash and the erasure of history amid China’s economic miracle. -
Movie Review | 'Up the Yangtze': A Visit to Old China, Before It Drowns
Posted: April 25th, 2008, 1:44am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
“Up the Yangtze” is an astonishing documentary of culture clash and the erasure of history amid China’s economic miracle. -
Movie Review | 'Constantine’s Sword': When Love of Religion Leads to Hatred of Others
Posted: April 22nd, 2008, 11:22pm EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
“Constantine’s Sword” asks: When your core beliefs conflict with church doctrine, how far should your loyalty to the church extend? -
Film: High-Wire Act for a Film Festival
Posted: April 22nd, 2008, 7:23am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
The balancing of art and commerce at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival has tilted more toward art. -
Film: High-Wire Act for a Film Festival
Posted: April 22nd, 2008, 7:23am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
The balancing of art and commerce at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival has tilted more toward art. -
Film: High-Wire Act for a Film Festival
Posted: April 18th, 2008, 8:48am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
The balancing of art and commerce at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival has tilted more toward art. -
Film: High-Wire Act for a Film Festival
Posted: April 18th, 2008, 2:03am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
The balancing of art and commerce at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival has tilted more toward art. -
Movie Review | 'Constantine’s Sword': When Love of Religion Leads to Hatred of Others
Posted: April 18th, 2008, 12:13am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
“Constantine’s Sword” asks: When your core beliefs conflict with church doctrine, how far should your loyalty to the church extend? -
Movie Review | 'Constantine’s Sword': When Love of Religion Leads to Hatred of Others
Posted: April 18th, 2008, 12:13am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
“Constantine’s Sword” asks: When your core beliefs conflict with church doctrine, how far should your loyalty to the church extend? -
Movie Review | 'The Life Before Her Eyes': Robbed of Youth, and Saddled With Guilt
Posted: April 18th, 2008, 12:10am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
“The Life Before Her Eyes” plays an irritating game of narrative hide-and-seek, continually doubling back on itself to revisit the trauma from which all else evolves. -
Movie Review | 'The Life Before Her Eyes': Robbed of Youth, and Saddled With Guilt
Posted: April 18th, 2008, 12:10am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
“The Life Before Her Eyes” plays an irritating game of narrative hide-and-seek, continually doubling back on itself to revisit the trauma from which all else evolves. -
Movie Review | 'The Life Before Her Eyes': Robbed of Youth, and Saddled With Guilt
Posted: April 18th, 2008, 12:10am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
“The Life Before Her Eyes” plays an irritating game of narrative hide-and-seek, continually doubling back on itself to revisit the trauma from which all else evolves. -
Movie Review | 'Dark Matter': The Cultural Divide, in Cosmology and Life
Posted: April 11th, 2008, 1:31am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
“Dark Matter” is a movie of ideas that does an exemplary job of translating scientific speculation into layman’s language. -
Movie Review | 'Never Forever': If You Embrace the Body, the Heart Might Follow
Posted: April 11th, 2008, 12:31am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
A fearless performance by Vera Farmiga, and glowing cinematography partly camouflage the awkward storytelling of “Never Forever.” -
Movie Review | 'Young@Heart': Retired, Yes, but Never Too Old to Rock
Posted: April 9th, 2008, 1:32am EDT by By STEPHEN HOLDEN
To observe a fluctuating group of about two dozen singers whose average age is 80 perform in the documentary “Young@Heart” is to be uplifted, if slightly unsettled.