Staying out of an actor’s way is a considerable directorial skill, and one that Oren Moverman exhibits with assurance throughout The Messenger, the tale of a decorated Iraqi war hero named Will (Ben Foster) who, upon returning to the States, is assigned to spend his last three months of active duty alongside old pro Tony…

Adventureland has a potent sense of time (1987), place (suburbia) and setting (a local amusement park, the summer after college graduation). What writer/director Greg Mottola’s semi-autobiographical follow-up to Superbad is crucially lacking, however, is verve, as his story – about James’ (Jesse Eisenberg) efforts to navigate issues of love and friendship while working at the…

Little more than a teen-targeted public service announcement for both avoiding relationships with mature men and staying in school, An Education plays like something fit for a high school heath education class. In 1960s England, 16-year-old Jenny (Carey Mulligan) spends her days and nights following demanding daddy’s (Alfred Molina) orders to keep grades up in…

An exploitative social drama dressed up in Oscar-baiting inner-city threads, Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire mucks around in low-income-housing misery, abuse and degradation in search not of enlightenment but merely liberal-guilt shock. In 1987, obese Precious (Gabby Sidibe) is 16 and still in junior high school, pregnant with her second baby by…

A titular hyphen isn’t the only thing missing from Law Abiding Citizen – logic is also in woefully short supply. One of the year’s most willfully inane Hollywood blockbusters, F. Gary Gray’s tale is basically a legal-themed variation on Saw. The story revolves around a seemingly average husband and father named Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler)…

Troy Duffy’s The Boondock Saints was, as history tells it, enthusiastically acquired by Miramax and then, once push came to shove over production disagreements, dropped like a stone. It was a deserved fate, considering that this dim-witted, aesthetically clunky Tarantino clone prizes glib violence, rank misogyny and even-ranker homophobia in the service of “edginess.” In…

Todd Solondz’s Happiness was greeted with controversy upon its 1998 release thanks to its empathetic portrait of a suburban husband and father of three who has a deviant taste for young boys. Detached from the hubbub, however, it’s harder to discern the actual objection to Solondz’s approach to this, the most incendiary of his sophomore…