Dear John could be The Hurt Locker of romantic movies when Green Beret Staff Sergeant John Tyree (Channing Tatum) loses his stateside girlfriend Savannah (Amanda Seyfried) while serving his country in Iraq. The film has little feeling for military experience, or the sense of patriotic duty that John enunciates during the opening narration: “I am a coin in the United States Army. My edges have been rimmed and be...

DO YOU KNOW how to read action movies or do you simply obey advertising hype? From Paris With Love delivers the minimal spills and thrills to those who like action movies for escapist release, yet beyond its hype, it is also politically aware filmmaking—without the sanctimoniousness of Syriana, United 93 orThe Messenger.Those films pretend to address the post-9/11 crisis while From Paris With Love gets all up i...

SURELY IT’S SOME kind of joke that Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy (Open City, Paisan, Germany Year Zero) was released on the market in a newly restored Criterion edition the same time as the British noir Red Riding Trilogy. The joke’s on us, made by the gatekeepers of contemporary film culture who roll over for trendy garbage, ready to acclaim anything they think is new.

The creepy-crawly Danish comedy Terribly Happy isn’t interested in satirizing small town life so much as casting a jaundiced eye on a tiny community’s rigidity, one that is more reminiscent of Shirley Jackson’s short stories or Thomas Tryon’s terrifying novel Harvest Home than Desperate Housewives.

To say that District 13: Ultimatum is the most socially conscious project former director-turned-screenwriter/producer Luc Besson (who also has his From Paris With Love in theaters at the same time) has undertaken would be a drastic understatement. More so than even the original District 13 or even the Taxi films, Ultimatum is hyper-aware of the racial underpinnings that support its gallic Escape from New York pastic...