Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, is the close-second candidate to be attributed authorship of the 37 plays of William Shakespeare, the glover’s son-turned-actor from Stratford-upon-Avon — who, due to the troublesome existence of evidence, remains the general favorite. De Vere is the protagonist of Anonymous, a work of…

Premiered as a BBC1 telefilm, now flaunting its wasteful widescreen in theaters, Toast adapts the autobiography of Nigel Slater, a popular British food writer looking back in condescension on the Midlands of his youth. The film begins in the middle-class Wolverhampton home where young Nigel is raised on a tinned-food…

Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) is a two-bit trainer traveling the state fair circuit in a not-too-distant future. His line is robot fighting, a sport that has absorbed the audience for boxing, MMA and, apparently, demolition derby. After a tough match leaves Charlie ‘bot-less, he gets news that his ex-girlfriend, with…

Wholly unrelated to the 1975 Sam Peckinpah film of the same name, Killer Elite is distinguished by one no-mercy, eye-gouging, testicle-punching brawl, and one whoppingly indifferent screenplay. After a collateral-damage close call awakens his conscience — the first of many perfunctorily recycled bits to come — hitman Danny Bryce (Jason…

The latest descendant of the half-century old de-evolution concept that began with Pierre Boulle’s novel, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is an origin story. Predicting an ape-supremacist future, Rupert Wyatt’s film is set in a contemporary America so preoccupied with the Chinese and the coming Singularity that it’s…

Cinematographer Tat Radcliffe’s gray Turin sets the monotone of The Double Hour, while director Giuseppe Capotondi softens promising material to mush for the refined digestion of sophisto audiences. Guido (Filippo Timi, Vincere’s Mussolini), a retired policeman turned security guard, is a habitué of speed-dating events, where he meets Sonia (Ksenia…

Lord Naritsugu (Gorô Inagaki) is a royal terror, and the court fears Caligula-like horrors should he come into his royal succession. Samurai Shinzaemon Shimada (Koji Yakusho) is secretly recruited to preclude this possibility with his sword, leading the title’s dirty baker’s dozen on a hit-job quest. Set in 1844, in…

Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts), a rampant 15-year-old only child, has two presiding preoccupations, detailed in rapid voiceover throughout Submarine: a broody classmate, Jordana (Yasmin Paige), and the flatlined sex life of his parents (show-stealers Noah Taylor and Sally Hawkins), brought to crisis by the arrival of mom’s glam-guru old flame…

The finest Western you’ll see this year, The Princess of Montpensier is set in aristocratic 16th-century France, in the heat of Counter Reformation. Mélanie Thierry’s father barters her for the titular title, marrying her off to Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet’s shy, pained prince—instead of her heart’s first choice, Gaspard Ulliel’s Duke de…

Something Borrowed is based on a 2005 work of chick literature by Emily Giffin. It was directed with extraordinary impersonality by Luke Greenfield (Rob Schneider’s The Animal), and produced by Hilary Swank in collaboration, apparently, with the restaurant Shake Shack—one of the lifestyle brands prominently featured in this tale of…

“This one perfect moment.” “That soul-crushing mistress.” “Our forever night.” These and other understated definitions are obsessively applied to a certain dreaded/anticipated ritual throughout Prom, a timely pop product set in a suburban high school during the last weeks before summer break and destined for the immortality of Vitamin C’s…

A U.N. premiere! A Vanessa Redgrave cameo! Zionist hoodlums! Distributors the Weinstein Co. and director Julian Schnabel overcome their well-documented aversion to media attention to address the Israel-Palestine question, pleading peace, compromise and the creation of a self-governing Palestinian state. While Jewish advocacy groups swarm to Schnabel’s bait, it bears…

Set in the months after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, The Conspirator follows the consequences of the fatal shot at Ford’s Theater—specifically, the trial of Mary Surratt, Catholic, 42, and the owner of a Washington, D.C., boarding house, who was presented before a military tribunal as the den mother in the…

Your Highness plays like a dirty-joke blooper reel made by the cast of a junky sword-and-sorcery epic, streaked with carelessly contemporary-sounding blue humor, blunt profanity replacing the naughty-naughty, tankard-sloshing, heaving-bosom ribaldry that goes with the period setting. The scene: a generic medieval realm from an EverQuest or Forgotten Realms module…

There is a great deal of prowling motion in Insidious: a recurring sideways dolly outside an ominous house, a trenchcoat-clad cacodemon pacing outside a second-story window. It’s the restless motion of a movie stalking its prey—you, dear viewer. A married couple, Josh and Renai (Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne), are…

With post-GoodFellas crime-movie tropes dyed for St. Patrick’s Day, this Ballad of Danny Greene attempts to enshrine the Irish-American strongman, a real-life folk hero among mob-lore nerds and Cleveland Teamsters for his Rasputin-like resilience through multiple assassination attempts. Kill the Irishman aims to come out bumping chests in upstart insouciance,…

Ink still wet on his MIT degree, Matt Franklin (Topher Grace) is back in hometown Los Angeles, waiting for his future to clarify itself while he loiters behind the counter at Suncoast Video, hawking VHSes of Harry and the Hendersons because it’s, like, totally 1988. Inspiration comes when Matt re-encounters…

Rule of law scarcely discourages the endless reprisals in Rachid Bouchareb’s Algerian War–era family-ties drama Outside the Law, which shows the FLN’s militant campaign for Algerian independence, as fought on French soil, through the experiences of three brothers. Reuniting in a Nanterre shantytown, this tattered family brings with it the…

Rick and Fred (Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis) are two domesticated husbands whose long marriages (to Jenna Fischer and Christina Applegate, respectively) have achieved somnolent routine in suburban Providence, Rhode Island. Yet the wives worry. Rick is a girl watcher; Fred masturbates in the privacy of their parked Honda Odyssey…

The Rite is the latest of at least a dozen widely released American movies in half as many years with demonic possession a major plot point. This doesn’t mean the subject is wrung out—its continuing resonance with audiences hasn’t been effaced by secular pop psychology or modernization within the church…

Just in time for the whole family to file into the multiplex on a silent Christmas night when there’s nowhere else to go: a return to the magnified dysfunction of the Focker household and the cozy holiday glow of some paychecking celebrities. This began a decade ago in Meet the…

In Yony Leyser’s documentary hagiography—which ends with John Waters nominating its subject for iconoclast-artist sainthood—William Seward Burroughs’ literary efforts are of secondary interest, noted for their influence on rock lyrics and band names. In the main, celebrity talking heads have gathered here to celebrate Burroughs’ life as an 83-year masterpiece…