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Futile Hug Syndrome
If it's 'next morning' and there's a close shot of a person in bed asleep, they will awake up, and turn with arm outstretched as if to hug person lying next to them, but will always find an empty space, as their partner has been up hours fixing breakfast/taking the dog out/exercising. MICHELLE MENDOZA, Chalfont St. Giles, Bucks, England.
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	Amour (PG-13) In health and in sickness "Old age ain't no place for sissies," Bette Davis is said to have said, and the longer age lasts, the less of a sissy you can be. The opening shot of Michael Haneke's "Amour" shows firemen breaking into an elegant apartment in Paris. We know nothing about who lives here, and are told nothing — except in pantomime, as one fireman holds his nose. In a bedroom, the body of an old woman is found in bed, surrounded by desiccated flowers. Gangster Squad (R) "Bottom of the barrel, Ma!" You may have noticed that the trailers for "Gangster Squad" are peppered with hyperbolic review quotes provided by syndicated critics of dubious merit. They're a sure sign of a movie's mediocrity, and my favorite blurb hypes "Gangster Squad" as "the best gangster film of the decade!!" Man, what a drag. If that's true, the next seven years are going to be lousy for the world's favorite crime genre. The Trouble with the Truth (R) Dinner scene from a broken marriage Jim Hemphill's "The Trouble with the Truth" is a pleasant surprise that gets better as the movie unfolds. A divorced couple meets for dinner after their daughter announces her engagement. In the course of this very long meal, they discuss everything we would expect from divorcees wrestling with their feelings. Structured as a single long conversation, it has been compared to Louis Malle's "My Dinner with Andre." and Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise" and "Before Sunset." It is a very small movie with very deep feelings. Somewhere Between (Unrated) Abandoned in China, adopted in America Linda Goldstein Knowlton adopted a little girl from an orphanage in China, and grew concerned about those unanswerable questions her daughter would eventually ask. So she went on a journey across the globe, following the growth and development of a few other American-adopted Chinese girls. The resulting documentary, "Somewhere Between," is a three-year labor of love from a mother for her daughter. It is a touching movie that, at first, might seem like a public service announcement, but eventually takes us into some touching personal struggles. Zero Dark Thirty (R) The CIA agent who knew she was right Osama bin Laden is dead, which everybody knows, and the principal facts leading up to that are also well-known. The decision to market "Zero Dark Thirty" as a thriller therefore takes a certain amount of courage, even given the fascination with this most zero and dark of deaths. (The title is spy-speak for "half past midnight," the time of bin Laden's death.) Sister (Unrated) The lord alps those who alp themselves Simon, the 12-year-old boy at the center of Ursula Meier's chilly, austere “Sister,” enters without introduction. We don't even get a good look at him for the first few minutes of the movie, because he hides his face beneath a ski mask and helmet. We learn about him simply by following him around a busy Swiss ski resort, apparently unnoticed by everyone but Meier's camera, as he goes about his business, which involves furtively stealing ski equipment from vacationers, hauling it down the mountain in the lift and re-selling it for bargain prices below. Struck by Lightning (Unrated) The boy who blackmailed his way to college This is the story of high school student Carson Phillips (Chris Colfer, from the television show Glee, who also wrote the screenplay). As the film opens, he is killed by a bolt of lightning. From there, it flashes back as Carson recounts his elaborate scheme to gain admission to Northwestern University. He has ambitions to fulfill as a writer, editor and diplomat. And he yearns to break free from the confines of Clover (population 9,000), a colorful, confused suburban trap that seems to let no one escape. The Impossible (PG-13) A natural disaster, a sea of emotion The tsunami that devastated the Pacific Basin in the winter of 2004 remains one of the worst natural disasters in history. Although I assumed its climax, as shown in Clint Eastwood’s film “Hereafter” (2010), would never be surpassed, that was before I had seen “The Impossible.” Here is a searing film of human tragedy. Hyde Park on Hudson (R) The only thing we have to fear is Eleanor herself Bill Murray wouldn't be my first thought for an actor to play President Franklin D. Roosevelt, but he may have been the right choice for "Hyde Park on Hudson." The role requires him to show Roosevelt as a sometimes lonely and sad man whose vacation getaway is his mother's family mansion, Springwood, near Hyde Park in upstate New York. The Matchmaker (Unrated) (12/12) » Playing for Keeps (PG-13) (12/5) » Citadel (R) (12/5) » The Central Park Five (Unrated) (12/5) » Starlet (Unrated) (12/5) » New Jerusalem (Unrated) (12/5) » Generation P (Unrated) (12/5) » Killing Them Softly (R) (11/28) » Wuthering Heights (Unrated) (11/28) » Fat Kid Rules the World (R) (11/28) » Life of Pi (PG) (11/20) » Hitchcock (R) (11/20) » Rise of the Guardians (PG) (11/20) » Red Dawn (PG-13) (11/20) » Scrooge & Marley (Unrated) (11/20) » Tales of the Night (Unrated) (11/20) » The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 (PG-13) (11/14) » Silver Linings Playbook (R) (11/14) » This Must Be the Place (R) (11/14) » Anna Karenina (R) (201201114) » Chasing Ice (PG-13) (11/13) » Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence In The House of God (Unrated) (11/14) » Skyfall (PG-13) (11/7) » Lincoln (PG-13) (11/7) » Holy Motors (Unrated) (11/7) » A Royal Affair (R) (11/7) » Francine (Unragted) (11/7) » The Bay (R) (11/7) » Nobody Walks (R) (11/7) » Older Children (Unrated) (11/7) » Flight (R) (10/31) » Wreck-It Ralph (PG) (10/31) » A Late Quartet (R) (10/31) » Wake in Fright (Unrated) (10/31) » The Flat (Unrated) (10/31) » Shun Li and the Poet (Unrated) (10/31) » Brooklyn Castle (PG) (10/31) » The Loneliest Planet (Unrated) (10/31) » Cloud Atlas (R) (10/24) » The Sessions (R) (10/24) » More Current Releases » Search Search powered by YAHOO!		roger ebert's journal Some of the year's best documentaries Here is a collection of a dozen of the best documentaries I saw in 2012. It's not a "best of the year" list. Just some good memories of these films. I will not burden you again with another complaint about lists. More than ever, I despise them because they shift focus away from a film and toward a list. When I recently caught up with "Django Unchained," for example, I gave it four stars. The comments section was overrun with readers asking if that meant it was now on my Top Ten list. One reader insisted on knowing which title it replaced. Although the piece was some 2,000 words long, another reader insisted he still wanted to see "my official review." A pretty good set of nominees The Oscars are the most important way the American film industry can honor what it considers the year's best work. But for millions of movie lovers all over the globes, they are something else: A show. Faster, Quentin! Thrill! Thrill! Consider now the curious character of Dr. King Schultz. He is an itinerant dentist who works from his little wagon, traveling the backroads of the pre-Civil War South. As Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained" opens, we see a line of shackled slaves being led through what I must describe as a deep, dark forest, because those are the kinds of forests we meet in fairy tales. Out of this deepness and darkness, Schultz (Christoph Waltz) appears, his lantern swinging from his wagon, which has a bobbling tooth on its roof. our foreign correspondents Pola Negri: The Yellow Ticket • Michal Oleszczyk in Krakow The only Polish actress ever to become a major Hollywood star, Pola Negri (née Apolonia Chałupiec), lived a life as exciting as the movies she graced with her presence. Born in a small Polish town of Lipno in 1894 (while the country was still under a triple occupation by its neighbors), she climbed her way up: first to the theatre stages of Warsaw and then to the budding movie business. After a successful crossover to the much more sophisticated German film industry -- and a happy pairing with its finest director, Ernst Lubitsch -- she starred in the international smash-hit, "Madame Dubarry" (1919). It was Lubitsch's ticket to Hollywood -- as well as Pola's. Little Hushpuppy in a big forgotten world • Omer M. Mozaffar in Chicago Benh Zeitlin's first feature film, "Beasts of the Southern Wild" (2012), is at times a wonderful and at times a gripping story of a little girl making sense in a forgotten land of trees and rust. It follows in the tradition of movies about happy children running through an unhappy world, in an America we never see on the screen. If she does not steal your heart in the first hour, she will surely grab it in the final thirty minutes. So, if you have your own little Ruthless Gradeschooler her age, then I pity the levees that hold back your tears. thumbs in theaters more current releases » One-minute movie reviews still playing Wuthering Heights The American Scream Amour Anna Karenina The Bay Brooklyn Castle The Central Park Five Chasing Ice Chasing Mavericks Citadel Cloud Atlas Fat Kid Rules the World The Flat Flight Francine Gangster Squad Generation P Hitchcock Holy Motors Hyde Park on Hudson The Impossible Keep the Lights On Killing Them Softly A Late Quartet Life of Pi Lincoln The Loneliest Planet The Matchmaker Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence In The House of God New Jerusalem Nobody Walks Older Children The Other Son Playing for Keeps Pusher Red Dawn Rise of the Guardians A Royal Affair Scrooge & Marley The Sessions Shun Li and the Poet Silver Linings Playbook Sister Skyfall Somewhere Between Starlet Struck by Lightning Tales of the Night This Must Be the Place The Trouble with the Truth The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 Wake in Fright Wreck-It Ralph Zero Dark Thirty more current releases » on dvd new on dvd more new on dvd » coming on dvd more coming on dvd » great movies on dvd more great movies on dvd » ebert's dvd commentaries Buy now » Buy now » Buy now » Buy now » Buy now » Buy now »

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