Christian Hamaker

There aren’t too many films that extol political conservatism these days, but those views are championed in The Iron Lady.

Carnage, based on the play The God of Carnage, is a pointed, sometimes brutal examination of human nature apart from God.

Though handsome to look at and featuring an impressive war sequence, Spielberg’s War Horse flags considerably as it wears on.

Moviegoers might think of Steven Spielberg’s great Raiders of the Lost Ark, a film with an adventurous spirit that Tintin also shares.

In Young Adult, arrested-adolescence behaviors movies tend to celebrate are seen as symptomatic of the protagonist’s deeper problems.

For those who can endure it, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy has a nice payoff. But until then, the film moves at a snail’s pace.

Starring Jonah Hill, this bawdy comedy takes the premise of 1987’s Adventures in Babysitting and adds lots of raunch.

One of the year’s best family movies, Hugo ends as an engaging film-history lesson but also taps into deeper human emotions.

My Week with Marilyn is frothy, passing by breezily and requiring little effort of its viewers to dig beneath the surface.

Melancholia examines depression and cold-eyed rationality that grew from Lars von Trier’s own struggles with depression.

What is love once a relationship’s initial heat cools into the long-term commitment a young couple thinks they want?

Even Anglophiles might get lost in this convoluted historical drama that thinks it’s clever, but is mainly just overheated.

A Shrek spinoff, Puss in Boots may be just the jumpstart animated family films needed ahead of the holiday-movie season.

While The Rum Diary hints at themes of political and corporate corruption, it never invites deeper analysis of its story.

Despite starring comedians Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson, The Big Year is shockingly devoid of big laughs.

Machine Gun Preacher hits its target, but as a model of bold faith, it raises more questions than it answers.

Dolphin Tale’s heart is in the right place. And that helps overcome the cynicism a formulaic plot too frequently feeds.

Although I Don’t Know How She Does It has an arguably conservative message, it arrives at that message very gradually.