There are movies like The Artist in which every shot is an exquisitely composed tableau. And then there are movies like The Grey, where Liam Neeson (Unknown) bare-knuckle boxes a giant Alaskan timber wolf.     My job as a reviewer is convincing you that both sorts can be enjoyable and worth your hard-earned money.     Neeson plays Ottway, who has the manliest job since gladiators went out of style: He is a professional wolf killer. Before I get a letter from PETA...

What do you do when you’re making a movie about a political figure whose politics you don’t agree with? Avoid the subject, cast Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher and give her an immense set of dentures. The formula worked. Streep and her dentures just took home a Golden Globe.     The teeth are right. But the rest of the film is all wrong.     The Iron Lady shows a feeble Thatcher pottering around her house. She’s still got some of her feisty...

In the cinematic world of James Bond and Jason Bourne, spies are men with hard abs, steel fists and fast cars. Theirs is a world of high-octane excitement: car chases, shoot outs and loads of hand-to-hand combat. Usually there’s a pretty lady or two to dote upon them when the action slows.     So when we see pudgy, gray-haired, bespectacled George Smiley (Gary Oldman: Harry Potter) meekly enter a room, we don’t think spy. That’s precisely what Smiley is hoping...

The writing in Becky’s New Car is very funny, the Bay Theatre actors very talented. Still, it’s all in service of making adultery funny and survivable with no damage done.     Becky — wife, mother and car dealership office manager — juggles work, family, a college son still at home. She’s content except for wondering if there’s more to life. One late night at the dealership Walter enters her life. He buys nine cars on the spot, assumes Becky...