Stephanie Zacharek

If you were to survey people who pay attention to movies — to go door to door with a clipboard, a sharpened No. 2 pencil and a sheaf of forms with the word SURVEY printed in clean block letters across the top, later to be tabulated on a vintage Underwood......

Action heroes with nothing to lose are the best kind, perhaps the only kind worth watching. In the opening seconds of Jaume Collet-Serra's Non-Stop, Liam Neeson's federal air marshal, Bill Marks, slumps in his parked vehicle, sloshing a few glugs of whiskey into a paper cup and stirring it up......

In the admittedly dubious interest of using national stereotypes as a way of understanding human nature, let's posit that while Americans have always emerged from the womb cheerfully, pleased with their right to pursue happiness, Russians were born to suffer. That may help explain why Fedor Bondarchuk's 3-D spectacle Stalingrad......

It's a little sad that Colin Farrell has outgrown roles that require him to wear raggedy sweaters and say things like "For fook's sake!" It had to happen, though. Farrell has always made a terrific bad boy, but he clearly knows he couldn't be a scamp forever, and he seems......

Every once in a while, a terrific small-budget indie comes along and nobody even blinks. Adult World, directed by Scott Coffey (known mostly as an actor, particularly for his roles in such David Lynch movies as Mulholland Dr. and Lost Highway) and written by Andy Cochran, could easily get lost......

Though it’s difficult to pinpoint the typical Berlin Film Festival movie, I’ve attended the festival enough times to attest that most pictures in the competition lean toward the somber end of the scale: You’re more likely to see a drama about immigrants in tough circumstances or children left to fend......

Greetings from the 64th annual Berlin Film Festival, where it’s a surprisingly balmy 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit). The weather here may not be business as usual, but the festival looks promising — the competition includes films by Alain Resnais, Lou Ye, Yoji Yamada and Claudia Llosa (whose odd......