A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Review: A rewarding day at the movies Films inspired by true stories can offer refreshingly different cinematic treatment and there is no substitute for good casting; A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood scores on both parameters. What prevents it from getting into the outstanding league is a certain amount of cynicism with which the average cine-goer looks at movies about modern-day saints, especially if they happen to host their own TV shows. Inspired by...

Demolition, Review: Shun If ever there was a practical example of ‘deconstruction for the sake of reconstruction’ being taken too literally, here is one. Our protagonist, a tormented and meandering soul, cannot cope with the loss of his wife, which tragedy has benumbed him. So, he remembers what his father-in-law once said, that in order to rebuild something, you have to demolish it first. His father is a more than sane investment banker and his own boss (which means that our hero...

The play-turned-movie August: Osage County follows one family's moral and emotional smack-down in the American Heartland. No one wins, though a shrink could clean up handily. The Westons of Oklahoma sure could use some counseling. And judging by the actors' comments at the film's New York press conference, they too may have some lingering traumas to be worked out from the ordeal of performing this Gothic melodrama.  Meryl Streep, who played the splenetic matriarch, and Ju...