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Review: The Innkeepers(1)

Ti West's spook show is atmospheric (thanks to the terrific hotel setting) and frequently funny; but the plot line is choppy, the dialogue often unnecessary, and the scares too sparse.
Ti West's spook show
By PEG ALOI | February 03, 2012

Review: One for the Money

TV director Julie Anne Robinson's insipid adaptation of this first volume in Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series has more in common with Young Adult than with the average gumshoe yarn.
Julie Anne Robinson's insipid adaptation
By PETER KEOUGH | February 03, 2012

Review: Charlotte Rampling: The Look

Rampling's physical gifts, unimpeded by plastic surgery in their march through time, are matched by a keen mind and an unapologetic approach to life and work.
Angelina Maccarone's portrait of the actress
By BETSY SHERMAN | February 03, 2012

Review: Big Miracle

Taking a tip from the oil industry, Hollywood has started exploiting Alaska. Following in the tracks of The Grey is Ken Kwapis's take on a true story from 1988 about an effort to save gray whales trapped in the Arctic ice. Surprisingly, the film offer
Ken Kwapis's take on a true story from 1988
By PETER KEOUGH | February 03, 2012

Helios Early Opera's Charpentier; plus, the BSO's Mendelssohn Lobgesang

There's a new group in town doing Baroque opera — not an easy ambition.
Hello, Helios!
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | February 03, 2012

Brite Futures | Dark Past

A few years ago, the cutesy teens in Natalie Portman's Shaved Head slid out of Seattle on the hot pink shoulders of robo-bounce kinda-hit "Me + Ur Daughter" and the cheap intrigue of a ridiculous moniker.
Turnout (2011)
By MICHAEL MAROTTA | January 27, 2012

Review: Crazy Horse

In La Danse — The Paris Opera Ballet , Frederick Wiseman looked behind the scenes at a revered dance institution. In his new documentary he examines a dance institution of a different sort, the cabaret bar of the title, a Parisian pop-cultural icon a
Wiseman behind the scenes at a revered dance institution
By PETER KEOUGH | January 27, 2012

Review: Red Tails

With a title that refers not to squirrels but to plane markings, Red Tails dramatizes the struggles and triumphs of African-American pioneers, the Tuskegee Airmen.
The struggles and triumphs of the Tuskegee Airmen
By BETSY SHERMAN | January 27, 2012

Review: Haywire

Despite some thrilling combat choreography executed with flair by MMA champ Gina Carano, Steven Soderbergh clearly phoned it in here. The barely-there plot involves Mallory (Carano), a double-crossed Black Ops agent who goes rogue in an uninteresting se
Soderbergh phones it in
By THOMAS PAGE MCBEE | January 27, 2012

Review: Miss Bala

Gerardo Naranjo's superb new feature, Miss Bala , brilliantly draws on the conflicted personality of a young beauty pageant contestant as a tragically stark emblem of Mexico's all-enveloping drug wars.
Gerardo Naranjo's superb new feature
By PATRICK Z. MCGAVIN | January 27, 2012

Review: Underworld: Awakening

The Underworld series got long in the tooth early, but here, in the fourth installment (directed by Swede Måns Mårlind), it grows new fangs.
Brief but bloody
By TOM MEEK | January 27, 2012

For Coyote Kolb, the roots come together

Johnny Cash's baleful self-portrait "Ain't No Grave" oozes into my skull through a Sailor Jerry haze.
State of mind
By BARRY THOMPSON | January 27, 2012

A Place to Bury Strangers | Onwards to the Wall

Onwards to the Wall clocks in at 16 minutes and 35 seconds, and it could shatter into smithereens at any moment.
Dead Oceans (2012)
By REYAN ALI | January 27, 2012

Cloud Nothings | Attack on Memory

With Attack on Memory , the third full-length from Cleveland-based Cloud Nothings, 20-year-old frontman Dylan Baldi approaches new, drastically darker material with the same empty-bottle angst that made his previous releases so appealing.
Carpark (2012)
By PATRICK MCDERMOTT | January 27, 2012

You Me at Six | Sinners Never Sleep

Sinners Never Sleep is a transitional album, though such efforts rarely bode as well for the future as this does.
Virgin Records (2011)
By MICHAEL CHRISTOPHER | January 27, 2012

Imperial Teen | Feel the Sound

Like its title, fifth album Feel the Sound is as generic as doubters have probably always assumed — they sound both relaxed and exhausted.
Merge (2012)
By DAN WEISS | January 27, 2012

Hospitality | Hospitality

On their homonymous debut, Hospitality sound like 800 different trendy bands at once (from Twin Sister to Tennis to TV on the Radio), so if it's pure originality you're after, you've come to the wrong department.
Merge (2012)
By RYAN REED | January 27, 2012

Review: Albert Nobbs

Lesbianism doesn't exist as a cogent category in 19th century Ireland, which could explain why Albert Nobbs (Glenn Close), a woman disguised for years as a man and employed as a Dublin waiter, has no personal understanding of who she is, her identity, o
Gender identity crisis
By GERALD PEARY | January 27, 2012

Review: A Separation

Somehow, despite an increasingly repressive regime that has jailed many prominent filmmakers, including the world renowned auteur Jafar Panahi, Iranian cinema continues to produce some of the world's subtlest and most illuminating films about the relati
Family drama
By PETER KEOUGH | January 27, 2012

Review: The Grey

At the center of this superior stranded-men-picked-off-by-external-threat thriller is Ottway, an anguished loner powerfully played by Liam Neeson.
Man vs. wolves
By BETSY SHERMAN | January 27, 2012

Review: Man on a Ledge

Pablo F. Fenjves might not be Sidney Lumet, but his clever if absurd heist film does acknowledge its debt to the late, politically inclined director's Dog Day Afternoon .
Clever if absurd heist film
By PETER KEOUGH | January 27, 2012

Review: The Flowers of War

In 1937 the invading Imperial Japanese Army killed and raped thousands of people in the Chinese city of Nanjing. The atrocity has recently inspired two Chinese films, including Lu Chuan's City of Life and Death and this unimpressive outing from Zhang
Unimpressive outing from Zhang Yimou
By PETER KEOUGH | January 20, 2012

Review: The Viral Factor

Made for a modest budget of $17 million — and feeling like it (who needs convincing explosions in an action movie?), Dante Lam's latest still gets the job done from a run-and-gun standpoint.
Run and gun
By BRETT MICHEL | January 20, 2012

Review: Silent Souls

This is probably the only film we'll encounter about the Merja culture of West Central Russia, a Finno-Ugric tribe in which even the most modernized people pay allegiance to ancient customs.
Magic realism and Chekhovian melancholy
By GERALD PEARY | January 20, 2012

Huntington pays tribute to God of Carnage

If Lord of the Flies wanted an upscale-urban bookend, it could do worse than God of Carnage (presented by the Huntington Theatre Company at the BU Theatre through February 5).
Parent flap
By CAROLYN CLAY | January 20, 2012

Review: Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos

The Fullmetal Alchemist series has expanded impressively, from the 2001 graphic novel, to the 2003 anime series and film to the 2009 reboot of the anime, and now Kazuya Murata's film, which picks up from the middle of the second anime reboot.
Animated alchemical battles
By MADDY MYERS | January 20, 2012

Review: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Too soon? For Stephen Daldry's 9/11 drama, the right time is "never."
An extremely exploitative and incredibly bad tale
By BRETT MICHEL | January 20, 2012

Review: Contraband

True to its name, this standard heist thriller is a composite of knock-offs, but when Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America is among the sources ripped off, the quality is pretty high.
A high-quality composite of knock-offs
By PETER KEOUGH | January 20, 2012

Review: Pina

Who could have predicted that it would take the surviving leading lights of the New German Cinema to put 3D to good use?
Putting 3D to good use
By ANN LEWINSON | January 20, 2012

Occupy, more occupy, even more occupy

I just read your article about the Occupy New Hampshire primary event ("A Wedding and Four Funerals," January 13).
Letters to the Boston Phoenix editors, January 20, 2012
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | January 20, 2012

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