Karenin (Jude Law) tries to rein in his wife, Anna (Keira Knightley), as she pursues a flirtation and then an affair with a handsome young military officer in a new adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's iconic love story.
Credit Laurie Sparham / Focus Features
Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is a cavalry officer who ignores 19th century Russian social norms to pursue a married woman.
After he'd finished reading Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, did director Joe Wright scribble on the last page, "Needs more pep?"
Wright is, after all, the man who put the cute little ampersand in Pride & Prejudice and gave us a giggly Lizzie Bennet rendered by Keira Knightley. Knightley is back again in the title role as the Russian chick who loves and loses and throws herself under a train.
When Parker Posey was crowned "queen of the indies" in the mid-to-late '90s, the title referred to her Sundance-dominating ubiquity. But it could just as well have applied to the Parker Posey type — powerful and wonderfully imperious, with a habit of cutting her underlings down to size.
That's the Posey who turns up in Michael Walker's tense comedy Price Check, where she plays a relentless corporate climber who shakes up a sleepy regional office. She inspires. She terrorizes. Whatever it takes to get the job done.
Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God documents the claims made by four deaf men who accused a Catholic priest of sexual abuse — and in chronicling the response of the church, details the role the current pope played in such scandals earlier in his career.
By the time Father Lawrence Murphy died in 1998, it's alleged, he had sexually abused more than 200 children. Many of them must have seemed ideal victims: Students at St. John's School for the Deaf in Milwaukee between 1950 and 1974, they possessed limited ability to communicate with others. Commonly in that period, the boarding school's pupils had hearing parents who didn't know American Sign Language.
The titular altar boys would probably enjoy Funeral Kings. The first feature from sibling filmmakers Kevin and Matthew McManus has most everything the average adolescent boy wants: swearing, smoking, swearing, gun violence, swearing and cute girls. And swearing.
Buffalo Girls follows two 8-year-old professional Muay Thai fighters. Pet Chor Chanachai not only fights to support her family, but does so while suffering from a heart defect.
Credit 108 Media
Stam Sor Con Lek fights to support her family. Her winnings go toward completing their half-finished house.
It's no secret that, in many parts of the world, children don't experience what affluent Westerners would term "childhood." Still, even the most hardened documentary buffs may be dumbfounded by Buffalo Girls, a look at two 8-year-old Thai girls who support their respective families.
They do so by hitting each other in the head.
Stam and Pet compete in Muay Thai, a form of boxing in which kicking as well as punching is allowed. As depicted in fictional action movies, Muay Thai is both graceful and brutal. Practiced by 8-year-olds, it's neither.
Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) and Pat (Bradley Cooper) are damaged souls looking for the kind of stability they shouldn't be able to find in each other.
Credit The Weinstein Company
Bradley Cooper's role in Silver Linings Playbook is decidedly different than his more humorous roles in films like The Hangover.
Credit The Weinstein Co.
After spending time in a institution, Pat moves in with his parents (Jacki Weaver and Robert De Niro) while he tries to repair his relationship with his wife.
If David O. Russell pulls anything off in Silver Linings Playbook -- an almost-comedy about a bipolar high-school teacher who goes off the deep end and isn't sure how to climb back — it's this: He refuses to make mental illness adorable.
By Barbara Schreiber / Correspondent to Charlotte Observer
Andreas Bechtler is best known as the man behind the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art – a member of a visionary family that has invested in art and the people who make it, cultivating deep relationships with some of the most enduring artists of the 20th century.
But Andreas Bechtler is also an artist in his own right.
The HBO documentary Crossfire Hurricane, about The Rolling Stones, prompts critic John Powers to reflect on the band's five decades of fame.
Credit Francois Duhamel / Sony Pictures
In his three Bond films, actor Daniel Craig has created a portrait of a darker, damaged 007 — evidence of the enduring character's mutability, according to Powers.
It seems that every time you turn around, you find another anniversary of some big cultural or historical event. I'm weary of the media's habit of playing all these things up, so I'm abashed to admit I'm about to do just that.
But you see, in the same three-day period I recently saw the new James Bond picture, Skyfall, and Crossfire Hurricane, a new HBO documentary about The Rolling Stones. And because the Bond movies and the Stones both turn 50 this year, I began thinking about how they might fit together.
Originally published on Fri November 30, 2012 7:55 pm
My first thought when I saw Jade Doskow's photo series was: "Wait, are we still doing world's fairs?"
I mean, I guess I kind of knew the answer, since they happen pretty much every year. But still, I never really think about it. And Doskow wasn't surprised; there's been a waning interest practically since World War I.
