It’s like catching up with old friends. They’re a little heavier than when we last saw them and have a few more wrinkles, but they’re still very much who they always were.

We know that because, even as we’re looking at their 56-year old selves up on the screen, it is intercut with footage of them at 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42 or 49 years old, answering the same question or explaining how they were feeling then.

“56 UP” is the latest installment in director Michael Apted’s extraordinary documentary series that began in 1964 as “Seven UP,” a television documentary in Great Britain. That first film, on which a then...

Anyone going to this film expecting a sex comedy or dirty doings based on the title is going to be disappointed. But so will filmgoers just looking for a compelling story and a movie that draws them in.

"Lay the Favorite" is a fitfully entertaining comic drama about a young woman who discovers her true calling, along with some scary encounters with questionable types, when she gets a job working for a professional gambler.

Despite a wealth of talent both on screen and behind the camera -- Stephen Frears (“The Queen”) directed -- the movie never finds a consistent tone or establishes much dramatic momentum. At its best, it's a diverting character study depicting several of Vegas' more colorful denizens.

The movie is based on a real-life memoir published in 2010 by Beth Raymer.  British-American actress Rebecca Hall plays Beth, an...

Contrary to the title, “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” is entirely an expected journey.

Filmgoers who saw director Peter Jackson’s previous trilogy, “The Lord of the Rings,” may feel as if they’re watching those films again, only with characters who are less distinctive this time out and, if it’s possible, even more sword-swinging battle scenes.

While Jackson yet again demonstrates his ability with “The Hobbit” to make a film that is ambitiously epic and visually inventive, it’s neither as engrossing nor exhilarating as the first time around with “Rings.” Maybe you just can’t go home to Middle-earth again.

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A man and a woman meet but there’s nothing cute about it.

Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts) is a rough sort, a bouncer at a nightclub in Antibes, a resort town on France’s southern coast. He comes to the rescue of Stephanie (Marion Cotillard), an elegant brunette, when she is involved in an altercation at the club and her nose is bleeding.

Ali offers her a lift home. As he drives her to her apartment, Stephanie’s short skirt rides up and he covertly admires her long, shapely legs. The next time he sees her, months later, her legs are gone, amputated at mid-thigh with only short stumps remaining.

Ali and a now-disabled Stephanie’s slow-building romance and the path to self-discovery it provides for both of them is at the heart of "Rust and Bone," a moving and marvelously layered film by French director-co screenwriter Jacques Audiard. As...