Movie Station - Ultimate Movie Guide


Activists Seek to Tie ‘Milk’ to a Campaign for Gay Rights

The release of “Milk,” a film that portrays gay rights battles of 30 years ago, is being complicated by a new culture war over homosexual marriage.

Arts, Briefly: Madonna’s Divorce Is Nearly Final

On Friday, Madonna, the singer, and Guy Ritchie, the film director, were granted a preliminary decree of divorce by a London court.

Weinstein Co. Trims Staff

The film and television production company started three years ago by the brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein has had a hit-and-miss record.

Weinstein Company Lays Off 11% of Its Staff

The film and television production company started three years ago by the brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein has had a hit-and-miss record.

Irving Gertz, Composer for Monsters of the Movies, Dies at 93

Mr. Gertz was a prolific though often uncredited B-movie composer whose melodies haunt a spate of pictures with words like “Hell,” “Thing” and “Creature” in the titles.

Movie Review | 'Special': Going Bonkers, Superhero Style

“Special” puts an indie spin on the current Hollywood vogue for moody superhero psychodrama.

Movie Review | 'I Can’t Think Straight': Love Beyond Boundaries

Plugging the same two actresses into different Sapphic scenarios may be a valid filmmaking strategy but it can be an extremely boring one.

Movie Review | 'The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)': Convulsions of a Family and an Abandoned Country

“The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)” is quiet, contemplative and impressionistic, which makes the story it has to tell all the more powerful.

Movie Review | 'Lake City': Suds, Southern Scenery and Fistfuls of Weaponry

When Sissy Spacek speaks her clichéd lines in the mediocre screenplay of “Lake City,” her delivery lends them a resonance that is not in the written words.

Angelina Jolie’s Carefully Orchestrated Image

In exchange for pictures of hers and Brad Pitt’s new twins, the actress Angelina Jolie got the magazine People to agree to offer positive coverage of her and her family.

Film: Forever Screwball, Forever Fearless

Carole Lombard, the beautiful, fearless screwball of her time, gets a retrospective.

Movie Review | 'Were the World Mine': Puck’s Love Potion, Splashed Across Town

“Were the World Mine,” an indie alternative to Disney’s “High School Musical” franchise, is a small, endearing film.

Movie Review | 'Twilight': The Love That Dare Not Bare Its Fangs

It’s love at first look instead of first bite in “Twilight,” a deeply sincere, outright goofy vampire romance for the hot-not-to-trot abstinence set.

Movie Review | 'Bolt': Canine TV Action Star Discovers That Life Is the Best Reality Show

“Bolt” is at once a knowing, satirical sendup of the Hollywood fame-and-fantasy machinery and a sleek product of the Disney-Pixar industrial complex.

For Studio, Vampire Movie Is a Cinderella Story

Tiny Summit Entertainment finds itself sitting atop one of the biggest pop-culture phenomena of recent years.

Irving Brecher, 94, Comedy-Script Writer, Is Dead

Mr. Brecher wrote vaudeville sketches, jokes, comedies for the Marx Brothers, a television series and screenplays for movie musicals including “Meet Me in St. Louis” and “Bye Bye Birdie.”

Movie Review | 'Harvard Beats Yale 29-29': Back in 1968, When a Tie Was No Tie

Kevin Rafferty makes the case for remembrance and for the art of the story in his preposterously entertaining documentary “Harvard Beats Yale 29-29.”

Arts, Briefly: James Bond Box Office Lowered by a Quantum

When final weekend box-office figures were reported for “Quantum of Solace,” the movie saw its record-breaking numbers stirred, but not dramatically shaken.

Critic’s Choice: New DVDs: D. W. Griffith

As a new boxed set, “Griffith Masterworks 2,” reminds us, D. W. Griffith is still underappreciated, with much of his work waiting to be rediscovered.

Saving the Story (the Film Version)

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory plans to examine whether the old way of telling stories — particularly those delivered to the millions on screen — is in serious trouble.

A Studio, a Star, a Fateful Bet

“Valkyrie” was conceived as a dramatic showcase for Tom Cruise, as well as a high-profile effort to kick-start United Artists.

Arts, Briefly: Backer for Killer Films

Killer Films, the independent company behind “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” has a new backer.

Wallace Shawn on ‘Gossip Girl’? It’s Not Inconceivable

The protean Wallace Shawn, an actor, playwright and emissary from the New York intelligentsia, has a recurring role on the prime-time CW soap opera.

James Bond, Armed With Record, Controls Box Office

The new James Bond film sold an estimated $70.4 million in tickets at North American theaters, setting an opening-weekend record for the franchise.

The Vampire of the Mall

Robert Pattinson, the heartthrob star of the coming film adaptation of the vampire romance novel “Twilight,” meets his squealing fans.

Film: What’re You Staring At?

The film series Punk ‘n’ Pie, BAMcinématek in Brooklyn, captures on film the world-annihilating rage and pogoing joy of British punk.

A Night Out With | Robert Pattinson: Home by Daybreak

Hanging out with Robert Pattinson, who plays Edward Cullen, the handsome vegetarian vampire in the film “Twilight,” which opens Nov. 21.

Movie Review |'Dostana': Tolerance by Way of Real Estate

It may seem like a cheat that the heroes of the first mainstream Bollywood movie to feature gay characters are just pretending, but the decent-hearted comedy “Dostana” deserves credit.

Music: Pop Music’s Dreamgirl Awakens Her Earthy Side

Beyoncé Knowles on her study of the life of Etta James and how it altered the direction of her new album.

Film: The Voice Behind the Drawing Board

Mark Walton, a Disney animator, gives voice to a hamster named Rhino and steals the show in “Bolt.”

Extreme Mumbai, Without Bollywood’s Filtered Lens

Lessons in cross-cultural understanding abound for a the British director Danny Boyle filming “Slumdog Millionaire” in an Indian slum.

Movie Review | 'War Child': From Child Soldier to Hip-Hop Artist

“War Child,” a documentary about the hip-hop artist Emmanuel Jal, is a bit ragged and repetitive.

Movie Review | 'The Beautiful Truth': The Evils of the Medical-Industrial Complex

“The Beautiful Truth” is a documentary about contemporary health hazards and alternative treatments.

Movie Review | 'House of the Sleeping Beauties': Lonely Old Men and Drugged Young Virgins

Not even the august presence of Maximilian Schell can dispel the odor of fusty smut that clings to “House of the Sleeping Beauties.”

Movie Review | 'The Dukes': Rotten Tomatoes

“The Dukes” tastes like pasta sauce that has sat on the shelf long after the expiration date on the can.

Movie Review | 'Eden': The Common Wounds of a Neglected Marriage

“Eden” is a picture so modest and minor-key that the emotional bruise it leaves may take days to develop.

Movie Review | 'How About You': Ready for a Spring Thaw: Bickering, Controlling Old Folks With Frozen Souls

A good scolding and a toke on a joint: that’s all it takes to turn the curmudgeonly old folks in “How About You” into goofy pussycats.

Arts, Briefly: Dark Knight Score Ineligible for Oscars

The score for the blockbuster Batman movie “The Dark Knight” has been disqualified from consideration for the Academy Awards, Variety reported.

Movie Review | 'We Are Wizards': Even After the Books, Pottermania Rocks On

The filmmaker Josh Koury has latched onto a great subject for “We Are Wizards,” his peek at some of the more engaged fans circulating in the Harry Potter world.

Arts, Briefly: American Film Market Attendance Declines

Attendance at the American Film Market, which ended Wednesday in Santa Monica, Calif., dropped about 5 percent, to 7,903 from a record 8,343 in 2007.

Movie Review | 'A Christmas Tale': Ah, Home for the Holidays and Extra Helpings of Family Dysfunction

After two and a half hours in the thrilling, exhausting company of the characters in “A Christmas Tale,” the intimacy we feel with them is wired with surprise.

Movie Review | 'Quantum of Solace': 007 Is Back, and He’s Brooding

“Quantum of Solace” begs the question: Is revenge the only possible motive for large-scale movie heroism these days?

A Documentary About the Obama Campaign Is Drawing Wide Interest

A documentary, more than two years in the making, about President-elect Barack Obama’s campaign is gathering significant interest from international distributors.

Movie Review | 'Dinner With the President: A Nation’s Journey': Searching for Democracy in the Pakistani Mosaic

In “Dinner With the President” the filmmakers go in search of nothing less than the meaning of democracy in Pakistan.

John Daly, 71, Producer of ‘Platoon,’ Dies

A British-born producer, Mr. Daly’s credits include “Platoon,” “The Last Emperor” and other Oscar-winning movies.

Arts, Briefly: Film Plans for Osage and a Rushdie Novel

The film adaptation of Tracy Letts’s play “August: Osage County,” a Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner, has been acquired by the Weinstein Company.

Movie Review | 'Slumdog Millionaire': Orphan’s Lifeline Out of Hell Could Be a Game Show in Mumbai

A gaudy, gorgeous rush of color, sound and motion, “Slumdog Millionaire” doesn’t travel through the lower depths, it giddily bounces from one horror to the next.

New DVDs: It’s Spanky and Gang: Hold on to Your Beanies

Watching “The Little Rascals: The Complete Collection” is a Proustian experience, yielding wave after wave of memories.

B. R. Chopra, a Top Indian Filmmaker, Dies at 94

Mr. Chopra found rare success creating both hit Bollywood musicals and dramatic, socially conscious films.

John Daly, 71, Producer of ‘Platoon’, Dies

A British-born producer, Mr. Daly’s credits include “Platoon,” “The Last Emperor” and other Oscar-winning movies.

Arts and Entertainment: To Sundance and Back

After being shown at Sundance, a short film by a Huntington director will next be screened at the Long Island Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.

Culture: A Genial Explorer of Literary Worlds

The critic John Leonard, who died Wednesday at 69, brought to his work a combination of open-mindedness and skepticism and the willingness to be enthralled and enraged, inflamed and entertained.

Arts, Briefly: ‘In the Heights’ Movie Is in the Works

Universal Pictures said on Friday that it had acquired the film rights for the Broadway musical “In the Heights.”

Movie Review | 'The World Unseen': Racial Oppression and Lesbian Longing

“The World Unseen” is a trembling soap of racial oppression and lesbian longing.

Movie Review | 'Repo! The Genetic Opera': Playing the Organs

Darren Lynn Bousman, the director of several “Saw” sequels, has devised an excruciating new torture with “Repo! The Genetic Opera.”

On the Roads He Traveled

The restlessness and the poetry of Robert Frank permeate the must-see 10-program retrospective, “Mapping a Journey: The Films & Videos of Robert Frank.”

Movie Review | 'Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa': Duck! The Penguins Are Flying the Plane

There’s a generally more diverting entertainment waddling along the edges of “Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa” than the larger one lollygagging on screen.

Movie Review | 'The Boy in the Striped Pajamas': Horror Through a Child’s Eyes

See the Holocaust trivialized, glossed over, kitsched up, commercially exploited and hijacked for a tragedy about a Nazi family. Better yet and in all sincerity: don’t.

Movie Review | 'Otto; Or, Up With Dead People': Straddling the Line Between Art and Smut

“Otto; Or, Up With Dead People” is sexy and silly in just the right proportions, a cult item with a real heart.

Movie Review | 'The Guitar': Shopping a Life Away

“The Guitar” is an arty parable that suggests a New York bohemian variation on the odious “Bucket List.”

Movie Review | 'JCVD': It’s All About Him, No Matter Who He Claims to Be

“JCVD” more often aims for a knowing, cerebral mood, allowing its hero moments of moody contemplation.

Movie Review | 'Pray the Devil Back to Hell': Unsung Heroines of Liberia, Making Guns Yield to Words

Uplifting, disheartening, inspiring, enraging — the mind reels while watching the documentary “Pray the Devil Back to Hell.”

Movie Review | 'Gardens of the Night': Predators and Young Prey in a World Gone Sinister

“Gardens of the Night” is a harrowing story of kidnapping and forced child prostitution that conjures a world entirely populated by predators and prey.

Movie Review | 'Role Models': Those Darn Kidults! The Menace of Eternal Youth

Judd Apatow neither wrote nor directed “Role Models.” But he might as well have.

Questions for Ron Howard: Talking Head

The director discusses taking “Frost/Nixon” from stage to screen, how David Frost created “the fourth network” and what would have happened to Richard Nixon in Mayberry.

Movie Review | 'Soul Men': Reunited for a Road Trip and an R&B Curtain Call

“Soul Men” is a raucous, rambling comedy, offering some laughs, some groans and a feast for fans of the musical idioms it mocks and celebrates.

Film: Avant-Garde, 1920 Vintage, Is Back in Focus

A digital restoration of the 10-minute film “Manhatta” breathes new life into the work.

Film: Hard Body Plays an Old Softie (Himself)

Jean-Claude Van Damme is all washed up, in a meta-movie in which he plays himself.

Opera With Heart (Also Spleen, Liver and Entrails)

There is also a deep, blood-soaked, entrail-clogged difference between “Repo! The Genetic Opera” and other musical dramas.

An Appraisal | Michael Crichton: Builder of Windup Realms That Thrillingly Run Amok

The author, who died on Tuesday, turned out novels that were intricately engineered entertainment systems.

ArtsBeat: Michael Crichton, Author, Dies at 66

Mr. Crichton wrote the blockbuster science-fiction novels “Jurassic Park,” “The Andromeda Strain” and “State of Fear.”

City Room: Tim Robbins Faces Mix-Up at Polling Place

In a case of reality imitating a liberal talk show, the actor found that his name was not on the voter list at his longtime polling site in Chelsea.

Movie Review | 'Stages': Intimate Table Talk for All to Ponder

The phrase “divorced couple” sounds like an oxymoron, but there’s really no other way to describe the Dutch ex-spouses whose table talk dominates “Stages.”

Arts, Briefly: The Farrellys Meet the Stooges, at Last

Since at least 2004 those latter-day knuckleheads Bobby and Peter Farrelly, the gross-out auteurs of “There’s Something About Mary” and “Kingpin” fame, have been contemplating a movie in which they would upgrade the Three Stooges for 21st-century audiences.

City Room: Tim Robbins Faces Mixup at Polling Place

In a case of reality imitating a liberal talk show, the actor found that his name was not on the voter list at his longtime polling site in Chelsea.

Arts, Briefly: A ‘Dark Knight’ Death Under Examination

A British jury investigating the death of a special-effects technician on “The Dark Knight” was told that he was killed in an accident during the shooting of a stunt.

Critic’s Choice: New DVDs: Gregory Peck

A new film collection showcases the decorous, paternal authority that Gregory Peck projected over the course of his long career.

Abroad: In France, It’s Vive Le Cinéma of Denial

Serious-minded Americans love to idealize the French movie industry, but as French cinephiles tend to see it, it’s their own filmmakers who shy away from tough issues.

Connections: What Would George Bailey Do?

The central predicament of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” with its eerie prefigurement of the present, provokes a closer look at the crossroads in which culture and finance intersect.

Arts, Briefly: A Dark Knight Death Under Examination

A British jury investigating the death of a special-effects technician on “The Dark Knight” was told that he was killed in an accident during the shooting of a stunt.

Milton Katselas, Acting Teacher and Director, Dies at 75

Mr. Katselas was an iconoclastic acting teacher whose 30 years in Hollywood raised him to guru status in the eyes of hundreds of actors, many of them famous.

The Nation: Back to the Ramparts in California

A drive to ban same-sex marriage echoes a fight over homosexual teachers 30 years ago.

Arts, Briefly: Screenwriter Announced for ‘Spider-Man 4’

David Lindsay-Abaire, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the drama “Rabbit Hole,” will write the screenplay for “Spider-Man 4.

Holiday Movies: Five Attention-Getting Turns

A look at five breakout performances this holiday season, including Alison Pill, Michael Shannon and Alexa Davalos.

Movie Review | 'The Haunting of Molly Hartley': Beware of the Darkness, and Those Ugly Clothes

God and Satan duke it out for the soul of a young girl in “The Haunting of Molly Hartley,” an unexpectedly cynical addition to the teen-scream genre.

Arts, Briefly: Conflicting Statements on Muhammad Film

The son of the filmmaker Moustapha Akkad said that a forthcoming movie about the life of the Prophet Muhammad would not be a remake of his father’s 1977 film, “The Message.”

Holiday Movies: The Interview That Was a Play Becomes a Film

“Frost/Nixon” was supposed to be Peter Morgan’s escape from movies. Then came the film directors.

Holiday Movies: The Cold War Sci-Fi Parable That Fell to Earth

H. G. Wells predicted it in 1898. But for Hollywood, 1951 was the year that the saucers landed in “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” A remake is set for this holiday season.

Holiday Movies: Holiday DVDs

Select DVDs for the holidays, including “Sounder,” “Irma Vep” and “Magnificent Obsession.”

Love and Pain and the Teenage Vampire Thing

The “Twilight” mission: make a film version close enough to satisfy the novel’s ardent admirers.

Rivals in Talks to Finance ‘Tintin’ Films

The elaborate, two-film “Tintin” series planned by Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson may find its financiers in a partnership being forged by Sony and Paramount.

Holiday Movies: Candy and Coal in a Gallic Stocking

“A Christmas Tale,” the new feature by the French director Arnaud Desplechin, is haunted by the ghosts of holiday movies past — and not just the ones you’d expect.

Holiday Movies: Stripping the Spy Down to His Manners

After giving Bond an inner life, in “Quantum of Solace” Daniel Craig sticks him with a broken heart.

2 Rivals in Talks to Finance ‘Tintin’ Films

The elaborate, two-film “Tintin” series planned by Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson may find its financiers in a partnership being forged by Sony and Paramount.

Holiday Movies: A Curious Life, From Old Age to Cradle

In “Benjamin Button” with Brad Pitt, going from old to young creates its own growing pains.

Movie Review | 'Zack and Miri Make a Porno': Skin Flick? Nah, It’s a Love Story

“Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” in spite of its lewdness, follows a gee-whiz romantic-comedy formula that would not be out of place on the Disney Channel.

Movie Review | 'My Name Is Bruce': The Evil Dumb

In “My Name Is Bruce,” a silly horror comedy that only a cultist could love, Bruce Campbell, the star of countless B-movie thrillers, mercilessly spoofs himself.

Movie Review | 'Splinter': Night of the Living Spastic, Ravenous Porcupine Flesh-Eaters

With “Splinter,” the director Toby Wilkins honors the conventions of the horror genre with skill and enough wit to keep the scares sharp.

Movie Review | 'Monks: The Transatlantic Feedback': United by Shared Ambivalence

“Monks: The Transatlantic Feedback,” an ambitious but unfocused documentary, bids to immortalize this short-lived if influential group.

Movie Review | 'One Day You’ll Understand': In Search of Family History Despite the Threat of Pain

“One Day You’ll Understand” contains no great revelations or surprises, but rather is suffused with a quiet glow of sympathy and enlightenment.

Login
Username:

Password:

Save to cookie
Free Signup
Lost Password