By Justin Marble
March 2–4, “Children of Invention” at the Brattle: Young filmmaker Tze Chun’s first feature was shot on location in Boston and focuses on a single mother with two small children struggling to make ends meet. When she doesn’t return home one night from her con-artist-esque job, it falls to the older [...]

Reviewed By Helen Epstein
An hour and a half before curtain, operagoers are lining up at the AMC 10 cineplex in Burlington, Massachusetts across the road from the mall. Forty-five minutes later, the only available seats in Theater 3 are in the first two neck-craning rows. It’s 12:15 p.m., a sunny Saturday in February when most [...]

“Avatar” is beautiful and otherworldly, but the film is so grounded in down-to-earth concepts that it restricts the viewer’s imagination rather than broadening it. An infinitely better and more complex recent space opera, “Mass Effect 2,” comes in the form of a video game. Is it art? Yes.
By Justin Marble
Over the centuries the [...]

By Justin Marble

Feb. 5-9, Recent Raves at the Brattle: Left out of the film talk at your last dinner party? Here’s your chance to get caught up. The Brattle is hosting a week of some of the best films of 2009, sponsored by the Boston Society of Film Critics. Harder to find titles like “Fantastic [...]

It’s easy, and popular, to write director Wes Anderson off as a hipster who offers nothing beyond quirk and the occasional funny line. But his films are really American versions of the French New Wave.
by Justin Marble
“He redeemed himself.”
“Redemption? Sure. But in the end, he’s just another dead rat in a garbage pail behind [...]

Filled with great insights, musical and other, Phil Grabsky’s wonderful documentary on Beethoven depicts “a man of huge intellect and huge heart.”
In Search of Beethoven, a documentary by Phil Grabsky (UK, 2009, 139 min).
At the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, Wednesday Jan. 13 at 3:05 pm, Thursday January 14 at 5:10 pm., [...]

By Helen Epstein
“Broken Embraces” at Kendall Square and Embassy Cinemas
1: Pedro Almodovar, one of the most interesting directorial sensibilities of our time, whose films probe our infinite varieties of experience in love and work
2: Penelope Cruz, an original who also incarnates the best of the many movie stars — American and European — who [...]

By Justin Marble
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The thrilling visuals in this documentary about skydiving get some things right, but the film ends up sensationalizing the sport rather than illuminating it.
“Adrenaline Rush: The Science of Risk” at the Museum of Science, IMAX, through January 23, 2010.
Reviewed by Kate Vander Wiede
I started skydiving for a few reasons. The first was the incredible [...]

By Justin Marble
Various Films at Stuart Street Playhouse
This isn’t so much a ringing endorsement of the current offerings, the biopic Coco Before Chanel or the British comedy Pirate Radio, as much as it is a plug for the brand-new Stuart Street Playhouse. Located in the heart of the city, the fantastic new venue offers a [...]