Armond White on how ‘Killing Them Softly’ amps political movie war Brad Pitt in ‘Killing Them Softly’ Killing Them Softly earns a footnote in cultural history for being the first dramatic film to question the Obama cult. It happens in a thrilling climactic moment that is part of director Andrew Dominik’s scheme examining America’s current financial 
‘Hitchcock’ shows the maestro without humor Sacha Gervasi’s Anvil: The Story of Anvil, the 2010 chronicle of the little-known rock band, was a rare excellent documentary; a film distinguished by its good-hearted recognition of what lies beneath artistic motive. Only a little of that beneficence is apparent in Gervasi’s dramatic debut Hitchcock, which takes a fanciful approach 
PIETY WRECKS ANG LEE’S ‘LIFE OF PI’ By Armond White No one can make a dull film like Ang Lee can. His new Life of Pi doesn’t settle for being a 3D extravaganza. At a reported cost of $70 million and three years in production, it is intended to combine philosophical rumination with a tent-pole thrill ride. 
He may be a law firm secretary by day, but there’s far more to the New York-based polymath who is Tony Wolf than his day job. What his law firm colleagues may not know is Wolf has a rapidly expanding page on the Internet Movie Database (IMDB). Wolf is a bit of a closet internet 
How Spielberg’s ‘Lincoln’ parlays the ‘great man’ notions of history “You begin your second term with semi-divine status,” the 16th president of the United States is told in Steven Spielberg’s film Lincoln. The evidence of that status is in the film’s mythifying visual style that presents Abraham Lincoln as an icon—silhouetted, spectral, sculptural. The people around 
Agent 007 James Bond (Daniel Craig) returns to his roots in Skyfall, defending the MI6 agency to which he’s always had steadfast dedication, even while gallantly enjoying its bachelor benefits. On home turf, Bond restores all of us to our pop culture roots; Skyfall’s national security plot, combining an arch villain’s (Javier Bardem) threats to 
Movie theme songs work as souvenirs; they bring the movie back to your heart—through your ears. No movie series has given the world more aural mementos than the James Bond films. Like the lusted-over, fantasized Bond girls, the Bond themes are not just love objects; the songs are timeless, idealized encapsulations of the excitements of 
Right on time for Halloween arrives Lorraine Lévy’s The Other Son, involving that most nightmarish conceit of all time: children switched at birth and raised by the “wrong” parents.Though the film takes place in the Middle East, its strength lies in the emotional undercurrent of a story that could happen anywhere. Joseph Silberg (Jules Sitruk), 
‘WON’T BACK DOWN’ CONTRIBUTES TO THE EDUCATION CRISIS A dyslexic child looks into the camera at the end of Won’t Back Down and correctly pronounces a word she had previously stumbled over: “Hope.” Thank God for the smart-aleck in the audience who loudly responded: “Boo!” Whether or not that raspberry came from a member of 
THE TRICK AND TREAT OF HOLLYWOOD HALLOWEEN Tim Burton reaches the outer limits of creepy in Frankenweenie, the 3D remake of his 1984 animated short about a boy who plays Frankenstein and brings his dead dog Sparky back to life. That’s why it was a relief to step from that gothic cliché to the more 
