It's all about the humans in 'Arrival'
With "Arrival," director Denis Villeneuve takes a very familiar alien invasion scenario and tries to put a new twist on it. While everyone from H. G. Wells in "War of the Worlds" to Roland Emmerich in "Independence Day" has envisioned a swarm of spacecraft ...
Big Eyes: 'The devil's pact between creativity and marketing'
Tim Burton's "Big Eyes," a portrait of real-life artists Margaret and Walter Keane, who specialized in creepy but cute paintings of saucer-eyed children and kittens, marks the first time Burton has returned to the real world since "Ed Wood" (1994). Yet while "Big Eyes" ...
Getting a hustle on the Oscars
David O. Russell's "American Hustle" is cleaning up in the early part of an awards season that was meant to belong to Steve McQueen's "12 Years a Slave." And that ain't no con. The movie snagged a Golden Globe for best comedy as well as ...
Our movie highlights of the coming year
Another year, another raft of unmissable movies. Here are the most hotly anticipated releases for JT film critics Mark Schilling, Kaori Shoji and Giovanni Fazio — get them in your diary now. "American Hustle" (directed by David O. Russell; opens Jan. 31): After "The Fighter" ...
Snyder ponders Superman's ultimate dilemma
Opening on the heels of that other summer blockbuster "Star Trek Into Darkness," "Man of Steel" is no smaller in scale but feels much more personal. That's probably because director Zack Snyder ("300," "Sucker Punch") is a hands-on kind of filmmaker, who secretly feels ...
'Extreme' characters fuel the plot of 'The Master'
Critics have called "The Master" a triumph of style over substance. That is, the acting wins out over direction and writing.
