Studio Ghibli, the company responsible for such well-loved animated pictures as Ponyo, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away, has done it again. It’s just sort of a different “it.” Ghibli’s The Secret World of Arrietty is based on Mary Norton’s 1952 children’s book The Borrowers. The combination of a British children’s story and Japanese setting make the movie a very odd combination of cultural artifacts and wrinkles in time.

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Two CIA agents, FDR (Chris Pine) and Tuck (Tom Hardy), who are both dashingly handsome and deadly in a fight, are best friends and partners who would never ever let anything come between them. Then something comes between them: a woman, of course. Tuck meets Lauren (Reese Witherspoon) through an online dating site after discovering his ex-wife has begun dating. Tuck and Lauren hit it off immediately; she’s captivated by his British accent and trapeze skills, he’s smitten by her looks and sense of humor.

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It makes our Top 100 because of its cast. But of all the movies portraying Italian-American gangsters in this book, we have to say that we’d rank this one as the most offensive to Italian-Americans.

This article is filed under 100 Greatest Gangster Films, Movies, The Fourth Wall.

Seeing The Vow primarily through Leo’s eyes is probably the film’s biggest problem. Paige just had the last five years of her life wiped out and that is inherently more fascinating than a man who wants to win back his wife. The fear, the confusion, the distrust that Paige experiences on a daily basis is a superior story to one man’s quest to prove his love.

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Safe House is the latest CIA shoot ‘em up to come out of Hollywood and although it falls back on very generic action pic conventions, it still manages to fit in a few exciting moments in an overall decent movie.

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That all changed when we were introduced to Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) in The Bourne Identity. Based on the novel by Robert Ludlum, Bourne is a former CIA operative who is struck with amnesia after a mission goes wrong. Directed by Doug Liman, Identity is fast-paced, constantly layering more and more information about who Bourne was.

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This film will upset you. This film will follow you home and haunt you. This film takes courage to face. You will not forget We Need To Talk About Kevin.

This article is filed under Best Movies, Books, Crime Fiction, Horror, Movies, Psychology, Sociology, The Fourth Wall, Thrillers.

To some fans, The Killer represents the apex of his career—before he went too commercial. It’s got a solid storyline and strong acting. But it’s mostly a lavishly staged ballet of bullets and blood. Guns blaze in slow motion. Bodies fly through the air. This is high-octane violence in a way that makes your typical Sly Stallone or Steven Seagal fare look like Mary Poppins.

This article is filed under 100 Greatest Gangster Films, China, Movies, The Fourth Wall.

So if you want to try a telekinetic tragedy for today’s times, your only real option, at least for now, is Chronicle. It may be a bit predictable and a bit clichéd, but so is Oedipus, that doesn’t make either any less engaging or heart rending by the end.

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And what better place for sustained periods of quiet dread than an abandoned child’s nursery, truly the most powerful asset of a Victorian horror story. In between these extremes of suspense and shock are several surprisingly vivid moments of horror, as the curse manifests itself well outside the bounds of the haunted house.

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The Weekly Listicle focuses on movies with giants AND patriots.

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This is a gangster movie without a memorable gangster. But it has one of the all-time great underworld molls in film history. Gena Rowlands, in the title role, is the movie. And that’s both a blessing and a curse.

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Acting, directing, and writing awards are the most popular targets for discussion, but there were more very creative folks left off the roll this year. Two aggressively original outsiders are out in the rain, peeping in at the Best Original Score category without so much as an acknowledgment.

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Albert, says Garcia, is “beyond the closet.” It doesn’t matter what his sexual orientation is (or isn’t), nor does it even particularly matter his gender. In the end, he’s just a human being striving to be happy, and we can identify with that.

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The heist movie is one of the most beloved genres in cinema and its great legacy is tarnished by films like Man on a Ledge.

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