Movies

What is it about a good news-gathering movie? The pleasure of watching skilled, doggedly determined people coming together to tell a story, to shape the chaos of the world into something comprehensible makes for evergreen cinematic fodder, from “All the President’s Men” to “The Insider” to “Spotlight.” Add “September 5” to that list, which tackles the slippery madness of live television reporting, essentially invented by the ABC Sports team during the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, during the hostage situation that unfolded in the Olympic Village, which ended in tragedy.

Before 1975, the year of Spanish strongman Francisco Franco’s death, it was dangerous to make any art that criticized Spain’s government. It had been that way since the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39.

Over the years dozens of movies and television miniseries have been produced about World War II in Europe and the Pacific, but of those, there are only a handful that touched upon the event that thrust the United States into the war, the attack on Pearl Harbor, 83 years ago Saturday.

“Saturday Night Live” alum Kyle Mooney’s directorial debut “Y2K” makes for a fascinating test case for Gen Z’s appetite for all things 2000s. His comedic sensibility, honed through throwback TV parodies on “SNL,” is at once broad and hyper-specific. In the nostalgia piece “Y2K,” he hits the big sign posts that will delight the younger generation craving the simpler times of a pre-9/11 world, but he also gets granular with late ‘90s music, fashion and culture in a way that one could only understand if they actually lived through it.

My love of movie scoundrels has been sorely tested this year. When I was young, I daydreamed of exotic heists, slick con artists and lovable crooks I’d seen on screen. For most of my moviegoing life, I’ve been a sucker for larceny done well. Most of us are, probably. But now it’s late 2024. Mood is wrong. It’s scoundrel time. Maybe Charles Dickens was right. In “American Notes for General ...

Uberto Pasolini tackles Homer’s epic poem “The Odyssey” with his intimate and muscular adaptation “The Return.” Despite the centuries-long significance of the text, not many films have tackled its events directly, and Pasolini focuses on Odysseus’ “nostos,” or his return to the island of Ithaca after years fighting in the Trojan War and his long way home.

In a recent column, Jim VandeHei – co-founder and CEO of the news website Axios – pushed back against X honcho Elon Musk’s oft-publicized statements that journalists, and journalism in general, can’t be trusted.

Walt Disney Co.'s animated sequel "Moana 2" navigated its way to No. 1 at the box office with a record-breaking domestic Thanksgiving weekend debut, a remarkable feat considering that this big-screen return to Motunui almost didn't happen.

LOS ANGELES — Part crime drama, part little-known chapter in the modern history of hate groups in America, "The Order" is by turns thrilling and chilling, featuring riveting performances by two actors at the absolute top of their games. Directed by Justin Kurzel from a screenplay by Zach Baylin based on the 1989 nonfiction book "The Silent Brotherhood" (by Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt), the ...

Even under the best of circumstances, being a parent isn’t always easy. Being a good father can be, in some cases, particularly hard.

If Luca Guadagnino has proved anything in his remarkable 2024, it’s that he – and his current creative team – are the preeminent depicters of erotic desire on screen. His sexy spring sensation “Challengers” became a cultural phenomenon with its hot-under-the-collar tennis matches, and he assembled the same group of collaborators for the surreal and sweaty “Queer,” an adaptation of the William S. Burroughs novella, written in 1952, published in 1985.

The Disney musical sequel “Moana 2” is, like David Lynch’s surreal adult masterpiece “Mulholland Drive” before it, a repurposing of material originally intended for the small screen.

“May history remember that once upon a time, such cruelty was permitted against the women of Afghanistan.” These words, uttered with a piercing honesty by Afghan activist Taranom, cut through the heart of Sahra Mani’s sobering documentary “Bread & Roses.” The film itself is a testament, a tattered documentation of the horrifying oppression that women especially have suffered since the Taliban ...

Like a broomstick hurtling from the sky, here comes the “Wicked” movie (or, rather, the first installment of the “Wicked” movies; the second comes next year) — and oh, I’m still catching my breath, in a very good way. Jon M. Chu’s film of the hit Broadway musical set in the world of “The Wizard of Oz” is an absolute thrill: wonderfully cast, beautifully sung, dazzlingly designed and costumed. ...

On the face of it, you’d naturally think that a film titled “The Lost Children” would be some sort of Hansel-and-Gretel-type fairy tale. And you wouldn’t be far wrong.

Emmy-winning talk show host and comedian Conan O'Brien has been tapped to emcee the 97th Academy Awards, set for March 2, the academy announced Friday.

Ridley Scott’s 2000 sword and sandal epic “Gladiator” closed on a memorable shot that became an indelible image associated with the film: star Russell Crowe’s hands, callused and battle-worn, softly caressing strands of wheat, as the spirit of his character Maximus makes his way home in the afterlife. Scott references this peaceful image in the opening of his sequel, “Gladiator II.” Rough, thick hands, toughened by farming and fighting, plunge into a sack of harvested grain, feeling the fruits of their labor.

There’s a moment in the middle of “Red One” – the Christmas-themed action comedy starring Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans – where you witness the movie just roll over and die. Time of death? A slap contest during Krampusnacht, in which a bunch of extras wearing rubber monster masks foraged from the set of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” stand around and watch as an unrecognizable Kristofer Hivju (playing Krampus) and Johnson take turns walloping each other across the face. Momentum grinding to a halt, the absurdities and indignities that unfolded before this point are all but forgotten, lost in a swirl of badly-rendered pixels. The rest of the film is a limp to the finish line, not that it was all that spry to begin with.

If “A Quiet Place” – the screenplay that put writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods on the map – was a rather tight-lipped, high-concept monster movie where the characters could rarely speak, “Heretic,” their latest film, which they wrote and directed, is the opposite. This is a talky chamber piece of philosophical face-offs, debate duels and wordy warfare, though the outcomes remain just as harrowing.