With “Lake George,” Jeffrey Reiner makes his first indie feature as writer-director since the 1990s, following a prolific quarter-century helming small-screen projects. The filmmaker has cited formative viewings of classic film noirs on television as an inspiration, but this twisty tale feels more like the melancholy genre fictions of the late Ross Macdonald — low-key, […]

In recent years, movies about senility and mortality have taken on a pitilessly bleak, frightening tenor, notably in such awards magnets as “Amour,” “Vortex” and “The Father.” Preferring a less grim approach is the Netherlands’ submission to the Oscar international feature race this year. Jelle de Jonge’s “Memory Lane” is a sometimes boisterous, ultimately affirming […]

Sylvester Stallone has seldom played the villain onscreen, and judging from the stolidity of his turn in “Armor,” it seems unlikely he’s wanted to. That lack of enthusiasm will be echoed by most viewers watching this uninspired action programmer, in which top-billed Jason Patric’s driver and coworker-son Josh Wiggins get waylaid by armed robbers while […]

Showbiz has always made for strange bedfellows. Still, it’s hard to fathom any single personality linking talents as diverse as Pet Shop Boys, Bob Dylan, Fishbone, John Tesh, Diana Ross, Dusty Springfield, Toto, James Brown, TLC, Lulu, Stephen Stills, Tanya Tucker, Bette Midler, Gladys Knight, Scott Baio and Richard Simmons. Yet that list is just […]

Initially a magazine short story, then expanded to novel form in 1972, Barbara Robinson’s “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” has remained a holiday staple ever since. Its enjoyable central conceit of Roald Dahl-style comedic nastiness — the first sentence pegs principal figures as “absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world” — no […]