Stephanie Zacharek

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REVIEW: Captain America Is All Beefcake and No Sizzle

As we near the end of a summer season stuffed to bursting with big, ambitious comic-book movies -- from the buffed, Wagnerian pecs of Thor to the pompous clutter of…

7 years ago

REVIEW: Friends with Benefits Pays Almost Zero Dividends

The idea of romantic comedies is that you want to see the two leads get past all their false starts and misunderstandings and get together. But what happens if you just…

7 years ago

REVIEW: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 Guides the Franchise to a Graceful, Moving End

Editor's note: This review may contain spoilers, particularly for those who haven't read the books.Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 was an in-between moment…

7 years ago

REVIEW: Errol Morris's Tabloid Tells the Sordid Tale of a Love-Crazed Nutter

Errol Morris's Tabloid isn't quite as juicy as its title might lead you to believe, but it does tell a suitably twisted, outlandish tale: In 1977 Joyce McKinney, a North…

7 years ago

REVIEW: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan Holds Many Loud Secrets Within Its Folds

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a nice little story about two women -- or, rather, two sets of women living some 180 years apart -- who vow "eternal commitment" and…

7 years ago

Movieline at the Midpoint: Stephanie Zacharek's Favorites of 2011 (So Far)

By the midpoint of any moviegoing year, the previous January seems like ancient history. Was it really just six months ago that I trudged off to witness the stupendously…

7 years ago

REVIEW: Horrible Bosses Works Harder Than It Needs to for Its R-Rated Laughs

Generally speaking, it's good that we're seeing more R-rated comedies. There's nothing less raunchy -- or less funny -- than implied raunchiness, gags that aren't…

7 years ago

REVIEW: With The Sleeping Beauty, Catherine Breillat Makes a Lush Fairy Tale for Adults

Catherine Breillat's movies are so bold and brash in their views of women's sexuality that no one could accuse her of being subtle. (Tampon teabag, anyone?) But…

7 years ago

REVIEW: Don't Jump! Though The Ledge May Make You Want To

Getting a movie's setup right is one thing. But following through on an intriguing premise is the hard part, and that's where Matthew Chapman's The Ledge, a thriller…

7 years ago

REVIEW: Transformers: Dark of the Moon Is Straight-Up Michael Bay, for Better or Worse

Now that nearly every action or comic-book movie wants to be as big, loud and spectacular as a Michael Bay movie, there's something refreshingly straightforward -…

7 years ago

REVIEW: Larry Crowne Gives Middle-Aged People — and Actors — a Bad Name

I note with a shiver that, as a person over 40 who has frequently expressed a desire to see fewer mainstream movies based on comic books and more roles for actors over…

7 years ago

REVIEW: Terri Is More Than Just Another Fat-Kid Movie

Movies about misfit fat kids are a tough sell. The surprise of Azazel Jacobs' Terri is that it sets up all the usual traps of the genre and then sidesteps them neatly…

7 years ago

REVIEW: Cars 2 Is All Chassis and No Soul

Everyone who's ever loved a car -- a beat-up Plymouth junker, a pristine '67 Mustang, a Hot Wheels Corvette Stingray, it doesn't matter -- knows that cars have…

7 years ago

REVIEW: Cameron Diaz Slinks to the Head of the Class in Bad Teacher

Cameron Diaz's character in Bad Teacher is not, to use one of the ugliest coined words to have entered common parlance, "relatable." She's a gold digger, she doesn't…

7 years ago

REVIEW: Conan O'Brien Can't Stop Is a Portrait of a Cutup That's a Cut Above

In the spring of 2010, Conan O'Brien walked away from his coveted Tonight Show post when NBC made him an offer he could all too easily refuse: The executives wanted to…

7 years ago

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