Movie Reviews

Kenneth Branagh's 'Belfast' shows the Troubles through the eyes of a 9-year-old

4:31pm November 11, 2021

by Bob Mondello

Actor and filmmaker Kenneth Branagh made his name directing cinematic versions of Shakespeare, then Agatha Christie and Marvel movies. Now, with Belfast, he's made his most personal film.

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Arts

Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana? A nervy gamble pays off in 'Spencer'

1:20pm November 05, 2021

by Justin Chang

Stewart doesn't go easy on Diana, but there's an underlying compassion that never wavers as we follow the Princess of Wales during an especially miserable stretch of her famously unhappy marriage.

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Kristen Stewart plays Diana in a very different vision of an imagined moment in her life.

Arts

In 'Spencer,' Kristen Stewart's Princess Diana grasps for reality in order to survive

7:00am November 03, 2021

by Linda Holmes

The new film Spencer is not a Princess Diana biopic. It is, instead, an attempt to put her in a different cultural context by putting her in a different kind of film.

Honor Swinton Byrne is an up-and-coming filmmaker who's mourning the loss of her older lover in The Souvenir Part II.

Arts

'The Souvenir Part II' is a near-perfect sequel about loss and art

1:00pm November 01, 2021

by Justin Chang

Filmmaker Joanna Hogg conceived her 2019 semi-autobiographical drama The Souvenir as a two-part work. The second installment is a wonderfully generous movie, sardonic in tone but rich in emotion.

Ikaris (Richard Madden) and Sersi (Gemma Chan) in Eternals.

Arts

'Eternals': A Marvel movie for everyone who complains about Marvel movies

9:20am October 30, 2021

by Glen Weldon

Indie director Chloe Zhao's influence is all over the new Marvel outing, a marked departure from the familiar MCU formula.

Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy) and Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) merge minds, bodies and fashion senses in Last Night in Soho.

Arts

In 'Last Night In Soho,' Edgar Wright Goes Wrong

8:49am October 28, 2021

by Glen Weldon

Edgar Wright delivers a technically proficient but punishingly contrived genre mashup involving romance, time travel, murder, sex work and nostalgia.

Movie Review: 'The Harder They Fall'

5:08pm October 24, 2021

by Bob Mondello

Idris Elba, Jonathan Majors, Regina King and Zazie Beetz star in Jeumes Samuel's western, which has a fictional story, but is based on real people.

Timothée Chalamet is a royal heir, and Rebecca Ferguson is his mother in Dune.

Arts

Sci-Fi epic 'Dune' is an immersive but incomplete experience

11:20am October 22, 2021

by Justin Chang

Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of Frank Herbert's novel is undeniably staggering. But his Dune also feels rudimentary, as if he's managed his source material without fully mastering it.

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Review: 'Dune' may be on HBO Max, but it's one film you want to see on a big screen

4:56pm October 21, 2021

by Bob Mondello

Denis Villeneuve's Dune — based on Frank Herbert's bestselling sci-fi novel — arrives in cinemas and on home screens starring Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya.

Art critic J.K.L. Berensen (Tilda Swinton) lectures in The French Dispatch.

Arts

'The French Dispatch' is a love letter to 'The New Yorker' — and to love itself

6:00pm October 20, 2021

by Glen Weldon

Wes Anderson's meticulously-constructed tenth feature adopts the format of a New Yorker-like Sunday magazine supplement to tell three very different, but equally idiosyncratic, love stories.