Movies

Liam Neeson plays a Boston mob enforcer with memory problems in his latest tough-guy tale, “Absolution.” The 72-year-old actor has said that he’s looking to wind down the action career that kicked off in 2008 with “Taken,” and it feels like with each new entry that he’s starting to say goodbye to his own particular subgenre. “Absolution” makes it easy.

Of late, filmmaker Robert Zemeckis is a somewhat confounding figure. The director of such beloved films as the “Back to the Future” series, “Forrest Gump,” “Cast Away,” “Death Becomes Her” and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” has delivered almost as many duds as hits, if you also take in “The Polar Express,” “Beowulf,” “Welcome to Marwen” and “Pinocchio.” An experimentalist obsessed with special effects and the dramatic power they can exert in cinema, Zemeckis is always trying something new, especially with motion-capture technology. It doesn’t always work, many of these projects drifting into an unappealing uncanny valley. Despite his experiments, he hasn’t quite nailed it yet.

Lee Miller is a name that doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue. Or memory, for that matter.

Halloween essentials are typically limited to candy, a pumpkin or two and some semblance of a costume. For die-hard fans of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” Halloween is also time to stock up on rubber gloves, playing cards and toast in preparation for a showing of the 1975 cult classic film.

You’re either on Venom’s wavelength or you’re not. If you are, you’re not alone, because as it turns out, a lot of folks are. The wildly successful Marvel series from Sony comprises a triptych of strangely appealing comic book movies featuring Tom Hardy’s take on journalist Eddie Brock and his sassy symbiote sidekick, Venom (whom Hardy also voices). The third installment, “Venom: The Last Dance,” rounds out the trio of films, which are both straight-faced and irreverent, creating a campy tone all their own, distinct from the more self-serious superheroes, or the sarcastically self-referential ones.

This October, voters have a choice: do you vote for the candidate you believe in? Or do you vote to keep a right-wing strongman out of power? Ideally, those goals and desires will overlap, and while this question has resonance for American voters this fall, the specific electorate at hand happens to be a group of cardinals, sequestered in the Vatican in Edward Berger’s “Conclave.”

It’s been nothing short of a banner year for horror movies. Since 2024 kicked off nearly 11 months ago, gore hounds have been treated with a seemingly nonstop supply of good fright flicks.

Over her career, Jane Fonda has collected honorary awards from the Cannes and Venice film festivals, the American Film Institute, the Producers Guild of America and, just three years ago, the Golden Globes. Come February, she'll pick up yet another honor, becoming the 60th recipient of SAG-AFTRA's highest tribute, the SAG Life Achievement Award for career achievements and humanitarian accomplishments.

Mitzi Gaynor, the midcentury Hollywood star who appeared in the movie musicals "South Pacific," "Les Girls" and "There's No Business Like Show Business," died Thursday. She was 93.

Over the course of his career, filmmaker Sean Baker has delivered intimate films of humanity and connection that take place in the nooks and crannies of society: the places that are often the most overlooked, economically, socially and cinematically. He’s made movies about friendship, family and even cautionary tales, but his Palme d’Or-winning “Anora” is his first true-blue love story.

Hollywood doesn’t exactly have a surplus of prominent female directors, so it’s exciting to see actor Anna Kendrick making her directorial debut with “Woman of the Hour.”

The dizzyingly entertaining thriller “It’s What’s Inside” debuted on Netflix last week, a head-spinning body-swap romp directed by Greg Jardin that features an appealing cast of newcomers working through their long-term friendships through a party game that results in a collective identity crisis. Having premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, “It’s What’s Inside” is now available to stream on Netflix.

There’s a scene late in “The Apprentice,” the new film directed by Ali Abbasi about the relationship between Donald J. Trump and the attorney Roy Cohn, that’s akin to Dr. Frankenstein realizing in horror just what he has made.

As we get older, it’s only natural that we should look back in time. And so often that means recalling one-time love affairs, especially those that – for one reason or another – ended badly.

If some moviegoers think Hollywood has abandoned faith and spiritual themes, that's all set for debate next week in a public series at Gonzaga University. Gonzaga's Faith & Reason Institute hosts its Faith, Film, Philosophy 2024 series: "Spiritual Film Themes in a Secular Age." Free nightly sessions begin at 7 p.m. Monday and run through Friday.

There's an existential question that runs throughout "Saturday Night," Jason Reitman's love letter to the iconic "Saturday Night Live," and its chaotic entry into the world on Oct. 11, 1975. People keep asking the show's creator and producer, Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) what, exactly, the show is? It's a question he's not able to answer until nearly the end of the movie, at about 11:15 ...

In 2017, the film “Wonder” was a surprise critical and commercial hit for Lionsgate. Adapted from a children’s novel by R.J. Palacio, the film starred Jacob Tremblay as young Auggie, a boy with a facial deformity who teaches his family and peers about the importance of kindness (Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson co-starred as his parents). Naturally, a sequel, adapted from one of Palacio’s ...

John Ashton, the veteran actor who was best known for portraying crabby Detective John Taggart in the "Beverly Hills Cop" franchise, has died.

At the start of a new school year in August 2021, documentary filmmaker Lauren Greenfield sat in a library surrounded by a circle of more than two dozen teenagers – a diverse assembly of kids from different schools, neighborhoods, and socioeconomic and racial backgrounds in Los Angeles. To help them focus on their group discussion, all personal devices had been left outside the room. Greenfield asked a simple question: How did it feel to be without their phones?