Movie Reviews

When NPR's movie critic sat down to write this year's best-of list, he kept seeing matched sets: two cinematic head trips, two brutal historical epics and even two riveting mortgage crisis flicks.

NPR film critic Bob Mondello reviews The Revenant, a harrowing survival tale from the director of last year's best picture Oscar winner.

Charlotte Rampling takes the lead in the story of a couple whose long and stable union is thrown off-balance by news that dredges up the past.

David O. Russell re-teams with Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper in a film based on the story of a real-life inventor. Unfortunately, the story is neither believable nor particularly interesting.

Quentin Tarantino makes a three-hour Western pastiche with help from Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and a cast of other old and new associates.

NPR film critic Bob Mondello reviews the harrowing film 45 Years in which a happy decades-long marriage is upended by an unexpected revelation.

Russia's Bolshoi Ballet was rocked following the 2013 acid attack on the company's artistic director. A new documentary airing Monday on HBO, Bolshoi Babylon, looks at the culture of the company and how things got to that point. NPR explores how the paranoia and distrust of management within the ranks of the company is both very Russian and a symbol of the Bolshoi Ballet.