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Tag: Drama

Ballast (2008)

Drama Rated NR

A quiet stunner. With his assured feature debut, writer-director Lance Hammer explores the tentative relationship between two people on the brink of despair: a suicidal single man (Micheal J. Smith) and his latchkey nephew (JimMyron Ross). With the austere winter landscape of the Mississippi Delta as a backdrop and two novice, riveting actors in the

Revolutionary Road (2008)

Drama Rated R

I wonder if Kate Winslet and her director husband Sam Mendes – who work together in the domestic drama Revolutionary Road – have ever lived in the suburbs. Separately – she in Little Children; he with American Beauty – they have made their own contributions to the familiar Hollywood genre of suburban satire. With Revolutionary

Rachel Getting Married (2008)

Drama Rated R

I don’t usually fall for it when an actor or actress deglams – when they get scruffy and ugly onscreen in hopes of winning an award. Yet Anne Hathaway redeems the practice in Rachel Getting Married. Hathaway doesn’t really hide her beauty here, as, say, Angelina Jolie did in A Mighty Heart or Charlize Theron

Frozen River (2008)

Drama Rated R

“Holding Frozen River up to traditional standards of morality doesn’t work.

Defiance (2008)

Drama Rated R

“As a heroic drama, Defiance has its clichés and narrative hiccups, but as an examination of the cycle of violence it’s often harrowing.

Doubt (2008)

Drama Rated PG-13

Meryl Streep acts up a storm in Doubt, and the movie acts up right along with her. The picture, adapted by writer-director John Patrick Shanley from his play, centers on a 1960s Bronx parish seething with distrust. Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Streep), the iron-fisted principal of the parish’s school, finds herself at odds with Father Flynn

Duplicity (2009)

Drama Rated PG-13

Duplicity is a movie built around dazzling dialogue, which makes it a rare and precious thing. There is banter here that could stand up to the snazziest verbal sizzle of Hollywood’s classics, in which Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell or Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert would spar to their own and the audience’s immense amusement.

Reader, The (2008)

Drama Rated R

“Call me a prude, but soft-core porn doesn’t seem a fitting entry point for considering the Holocaust’s agonies.

Gran Torino (2008)

Drama Rated R

“Awkward as a social drama – as if Eastwood had only lately seen Boyz N the Hood – yet as another one of his meditations on aging, the movie is on to something.

Che (2008)

Drama Rated R

"If there was any hint of a devil to Che Guevara, you won’t find him in Soderbergh’s intricately documented details."

Recent Reviews

The Blood of a Poet (1932)

Drama Rated NR

“A surrealist burst of artistic angst…”

If I Go Will They Miss Me (2026)

Drama Rated NR

“… creates a permeable world, in which unspoken fears and dreams seep into the mundanity of everyday life.”

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)

Thriller Rated R

“Lee’s true gift is to make every moment feel plausible and palpable.”


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