drama

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Good Theater wrestles with love and sin

There's only one major problem in the love between Adam (Rob Cameron), a sarcastic would-be teacher working in retail, and Luke (Joe Bearor), an aspiring young actor.
Heartplay
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | February 03, 2012

Review: Luck

You get the feeling that Milch and Mann just want to show off what they know about horse racing. When one of Marcus's crew keeps screaming out during the big Pick Six race, "What's going on!?," he speaking for the audience.
HBO goes to the races
By JON GARELICK | January 27, 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: Joyful Noise

There's not much joy but there's plenty of noise of the rafter-rocking gospel singing variety in Tony Graff's musical dramedy.
Rafter-rocking gospel singing
By TOM MEEK | January 13, 2012

Review: Answers to Nothing(1)

The baleful influence of Paul Haggis's multi-narrative Oscar-winner Crash (2004) continues with Matthew Leutwyler's trite contraption.
Matthew Leutwyler's trite contraption
By PETER KEOUGH | December 02, 2011

Cambridge moves to Boston in Before I Leave You

Fear of mortality is a domino in Before I Leave You, the play with which 72-year-old dramatist Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro, who has been flexing her inky fingers in Cambridge for 40 years, enters the big time.
Autumn garden
By CAROLYN CLAY | November 04, 2011

Review: The Skin I Live In

Pedro Almodóvar applies all his hypnotic control to a sensuous, sinister tale of a plastic surgeon who kidnaps a beautiful woman in order to shroud her in experimental skin.
A sensuous, sinister tale of a plastic surgeon
By SHEILA JOHNSTON | October 28, 2011

Review: Puncture

Though drawn from a true story, Adam and Mark Kassen's drama falls into the pattern of films like The Verdict in which a crapulous barrister gets a second chance by taking on a case of David-versus-Goliath injustice.
Facing down fat cats
By PETER KEOUGH | October 21, 2011

Review: Weekend

This appealing gay-themed drama, written and directed with intelligence by Andrew Haigh, is a British cousin to the American mumblecore movement, as two twentysomething guys meet, have sex, talk, have more sex, have much more chat, and get closer and cl
Gay-themed drama
By GERALD PEARY | October 14, 2011

Review: Littlerock(1)

Two young Japanese tourists, siblings Rintaro (Rintaro Sawamoto) and Atsuko (Atsuko Okatsuka), get stranded when their car breaks down in the California backwater of the title.
Altogether original
By PETER KEOUGH | October 07, 2011

Review: Machine Gun Preacher

Jesus does funny things to people: one day you're sitting on a toilet shooting heroin; the next you're building an orphanage in war-torn southern Sudan.
White-savior storyline
By ANN LEWINSON | September 30, 2011

Review: Girlfriend

One night Evan's mother (Amanda Plummer) asks him to make a wish. He says he wants a girlfriend, and his wish comes true, but at a cost.
Concerned only with the truth
By PETER KEOUGH | September 30, 2011

Review: Restless

Gus Van Sant's Restless follows a similar template to Jonathan Levin's 50/50 , with more precious results.
Death-obsessed teens in love
By PETER KEOUGH | September 30, 2011

Review: 50/50

In 50/50 , Jonathan Levine, whose The Wackness (2008) showed a talent for sardonic comedy, makes a halfhearted attempt to raise Will Reiser's script (partly autobiographical) above clever stereotype.
An edgy concept, and a fine cast
By PETER KEOUGH | September 30, 2011

Jonah Hill straightens up

The Superbad star has embraced his inner math geek for his role in Moneyball, the film adaptation of Michael Lewis's best-selling book on Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, who turned the baseball world on its head in 2002 when he cast aside his sc
Money man
By SEAN KERRIGAN | September 23, 2011

Is Boardwalk Empire about to enter its golden age?

Dispel any remaining doubts. The new season (which begins this Sunday at 9 pm on HBO) unfolds with a new leisurely, cinematic grandeur.
Easy livin'
By JON GARELICK | September 23, 2011

Review: Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame

The latest action epic from Hong Kong new wave director Tsui Hark ( Once Upon a Time in China ) is a fact-based historical drama set in 689 AD, a period when "all hell was about to break loose," according to the dense narration that opens the film.
Exhilarating action
By BRETT MICHEL | September 23, 2011

Review: Happy, Happy

First time filmmaker Anne Sewitsky finds a compassionate way to tell a familiar tale of adultery, and she's helped immeasurably by a first-rate acting ensemble, especially the two superlative actresses, whom you could imagine cast in films of the late I
A familiar tale of adultery
By GERALD PEARY | September 23, 2011

Review: My Afternoons with Margueritte

European cinema doesn't have as many sure-fire formulas as Hollywood, but the one described, I think, by Pauline Kael as the "lonely child, clean old man" scenario has long endured.
Twisting the "lonely child, clean old man" formula
By PETER KEOUGH | September 23, 2011

Review: Straw Dogs

Remaking, polishing, and in effect housebreaking what should've remained untamed and feral, Rod Lurie's new version of the Peckinpah classic follows the original's story beats closely, and so the devil is in the details.
Rod Lurie's new version of the Peckinpah classic
By MICHAEL ATKINSON | September 23, 2011

Review: A Dolphin Tale

Winter the dolphin gamely plays herself in this loose re-telling of her fight for survival after a crab trap mangles her tail.
Not much of a splash
By ALICIA POTTER | September 23, 2011

Review: Ringer

Sixty seconds into the CW's new psychological thriller Ringer, star Sarah Michelle Gellar is seen running from a masked attacker in the darkness.
Sarah Michelle Gellar is her own vehicle
By SHARON STEEL | September 09, 2011

Review: The Debt

Based on the 2007 Israeli film Ha-Hov, the story weaves present and past together, with most of the action surrounding the fateful mission and the perilous web of duty, passion, and betrayal that still haunts the agents.
John Madden's smart, icy thriller
By PEG ALOI | September 02, 2011

Review: Aurora

Long after such an insight might do any good, Viorel, the mopey, truculent antihero of this second film in Cristi Puiu's "Six Stories from the Outskirts of Bucharest" observes that the justice system does not comprehend the complexity of his relationshi
Deepening the mystery
By PETER KEOUGH | August 26, 2011

Review: Griff the Invisible

Like Kick-Ass and Super , Leon Ford's Griff the Invisible reaffirms the notion that superheroes exist to provide the meek and marginalized with an empowering fantasy.
Downtrodden superheroes
By PETER KEOUGH | August 26, 2011

Review: Point Blank

Samuel (Gilles Lellouche), a student nurse, gets sucked into a quagmire of murder and corruption when a thug kidnaps his pregnant wife, Nadia (Elena Anaya), to blackmail him into springing Hugo (Roschdy Zem), a wounded prisoner held by the police at the
Diminishing returns
By PETER KEOUGH | August 12, 2011

Reimagining Porgy and Bess

In the new production at the American Repertory Theater, directed by Diane Paulus, Messrs. Heyward and Gershwin have been reworked by two actual African-Americans: two-time Obie Award winner Diedre L. Murray and Suzan-Lori Parks, the first African-Americ
The A.R.T. takes on the Gershwins' classic and prep it for Broadway
By EUGENIA WILLIAMSON | August 12, 2011

Review: The Future

First of all let me confess that I'm a sucker for a cute, sad little kitten, especially one with a bum leg; like little Paw Paw, a miserable shelter stray with renal problems and a tiny cast, whom I found the most appealing character for much of Miranda
Miranda July's shaggy kitten story
By PETER KEOUGH | August 05, 2011

Review: Friends with Benefits

FWB is a well-crafted comedy of the sex-first, romance-later genre that — bonus! — isn't blatantly nonsensical.
Chemistry and comic timing
By BETSY SHERMAN | July 29, 2011

Review: Another Earth

Apparently it's getting harder to meet compatible partners these days in independent movies.
Twisted psychology
By PETER KEOUGH | July 29, 2011

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