Film Meryl Streep is the best actress of her generation, and she raises the bar again as 1980s British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. Streep spends most of the film portraying Thatcher as she is now: an elderly woman looking back on her life. Confused, sometimes delusional, she carries on conversations with her dead husband, Denis, played by Jim Broadbent. Alexandra Roach does a fine job portraying Thatcher as a young woman, but Streep's powerful performance warrants Oscar consideration. Streep is so good that you get the feeling she could have been cast as the lead in The…

Movie Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, or Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, face a new supervillain set on destroying the world in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Holmes and Watson square off against Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris), who has cooked up a scheme to pit various European nations against one another in the hope of profiting from the demand for weapons.  A Gypsy fortuneteller, played by Noomi Rapace, tags along. Rachel McAdams, Holmes' love interest in the first film, makes a brief appearance. Guy Ritchie once again directs, turning Arthur Conan Doyle's classic literary character…

Movie No fewer than a dozen story lines intertwine in the star-stuffed New Year’s Eve. Those stories are spliced together and made into a movie. The small stories include first kisses, midnight rendezvous, newborns, dying fathers, trapped strangers and husbands at war. The result is a big, bloated cast of celebrities with little to say, except happy holidays. So who's in the film? Let's roll the credits: Halle Berry, Jessica Biel, Jon Bon Jovi, Abigail Breslin, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Robert De Niro, Josh Duhamel, Zac Efron, Hector Elizondo, Katherine Heigl, Ashton Kutcher, Seth Meyers, Lea…

Movie Michelle Williams gives an Oscar-worthy performance as Marilyn Monroe in My Week with Marilyn. The movie focuses on the summer of 1956, when Monroe went to London to shoot The Prince and the Showgirl with Laurence Olivier (played by Kenneth Branagh). From the start, nothing goes well. Monroe is hopped up on pills, messes up her lines, is always late on the set and lacks self-confidence. No one likes her except for Dame Sybil Thorndike (Judi Dench) and messenger boy Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne). The story is told through Colin’s eyes. For all the Harry Potter fans out there, Emma Watson…

Movie Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Fozzie, Gonzo, Animal and all the rest are in The Muppets. Jason Segel co-wrote and stars in the film as Gary. He and girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams) head to Hollywood on a dream trip. Tagging along is Gary's brother, Walter, a cute little puppet who is the world's biggest Muppets fan. Upon arriving in Hollywood, they find out the Muppets' studio has fallen into disrepair. Kermit and his gang of friends have long since parted company, but they reunite to put on a telethon to raise cash to buy back the studio. An all-star cast makes this a good movie for young …

Movie It has been three years since the first Twilight movie, and the wait is finally over: Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson) tie the knot at last in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn—Part 1. The film is the fourth in a supernatural soap opera franchise that has raked in nearly $2 billion worldwide. Here is all you need to know to jump into the series: Vampire Edward Cullen and virginal human Bella Swan are getting married, and their werewolf friend Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) is not very happy about it. Are you Team Edward or Team Jacob? Let us know in the comments. There…

Movie J. Edgar Hoover ruled the FBI for decades, nosing around in the private lives of his enemies and friends. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Hoover in Clint Eastwood’s film about one of the most powerful Americans of the last century. J. Edgar focuses on those closest to Hoover: mother Annie Hoover (Judi Dench), secretary Helen Gandy (Naomi Watts), and FBI associate director and Hoover companion Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer). Was J. Edgar Hoover a good guy or a bad guy? Tell us in the comments. DiCaprio, 37, as an aging Hoover is a stretch at times, and I don’t know whether he’s Oscar-worthy in a…

Movie Ben Stiller plays an apartment building manager who is ripped off by penthouse resident Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda). Stiller and the other swindled employees (Casey Affleck, Matthew Broderick, Michael Pena and Gabourey Sidibe) plan their comic criminal revenge in Tower Heist. Are Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy still funny or have they lost their touch? Tell us in the comments. After an FBI agent (played by Téa Leoni) leaks word of a large stash of cash in Shaw's apartment, Stiller's character hires Slide, a two-bit cat burglar played by Eddie Murphy, to plan the heist. The movie picks up with…

Movie If you like scary movies, Paranormal Activity 3 could be just the movie for you. This old-fashioned ghost movie prequel takes the story line back to the beginning of the franchise and focuses on the two sisters seen as adults in the previous films. The girls share a two-level home with their mother and her boyfriend. The girls are aware of a ghostly presence in the house; the adults, at first, are not. The boyfriend has video cameras set up all over the house—running all the time, day and night. The suspense builds as we watch the surveillance-type video, waiting for a ghost to appear. …

Movie Footloose is back, 27 years after America first cut loose with the story of old folks who hate loud music and wild dancing teens who want to shake their groove thing all night long. The story remains basically the same in this remake, largely shot in Hiram, Acworth, Kennesaw and other Atlanta-area sites. A grieving pastor (Dennis Quaid now, John Lithgow in 1984) leads a drive to pass an ordinance forbidding dancing, and a few years later his daughter, Ariel (Julianne Hough now, Lori Singer then), stirs controversy by participating in forbidden, underground dancing. The new kid in town, …

Movie This week’s movie, The Ides of March, is a political thriller along the lines of the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky saga. George Clooney directs the film and plays Democratic presidential candidate Mike Morris, while Ryan Gosling has the spotlight as media strategist Stephen Myers. Also contributing to the strong acting are Philip Seymour Hoffman as Morris’ campaign manager, Paul Giamatti as the opposition’s campaign manager, Marisa Tomei as a New York Times reporter and Evan Rachel Wood as the intern with a secret. Review Hollywood superstar George Clooney stars in and directs The Ides …

Movie Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Adam, a 27-year-old man who has his whole life ahead of him until he discovers he has a rare form of cancer and has only a 50/50 chance of survival. The people in Adam's life react differently to the news. His girlfriend, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, pledges to stand by him, then dumps him. His mother, Anjelica Huston, goes into smothering mode and his best friend, Kyle, played by Seth Rogen, tries to keep his spirits up by turning his life into a nonstop party. Rogen co-produces 50/50, a movie based loosely in part on the life of Rogen's good friend Will …

Movie Brad Pitt sets out to revolutionize baseball in the real-life story Moneyball. Pitt plays Billy Beane, the Oakland A's general manager who hires math whiz Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) to spark the revolution. The film doesn’t spend a lot of time on the field. Instead, it’s the story of nerds using statistics to take over a jock's world and hit a grand slam. Moneyball stands on its own with a strong supporting cast of personalities, including Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman as the team manager at odds with the Ivy League math theory. Aaron Sorkin helped write the script, which is not …

Movie Ryan Gosling fuels Drive as Driver, a solitary stunt driver who works on movie sets by day and drives getaway cars at night. He falls for his apartment neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan), a mom with a small son whose father is an ex-con. The ex-con drags Driver into a robbery that goes wrong. Albert Brooks plays a crime lord with a thing for forks, Ron Perlman is the Jewish gangster who does business in a pizza parlor, and Bryan Cranston plays Driver's best buddy, giving this film plenty of acting horsepower. Drive is a gritty yet glamorous film bursting with action. European director …

Movie Two brothers slug out their emotional baggage in the moving, melodramatic sports movie Warrior. Joel Edgerton plays Brendan, a family man who earns a living as a teacher and extra cash moonlighting as a fighter. His brother, Tommy, played by Tom Hardy, is a brooding war veteran who has returned home under mysterious circumstance. Their father, Paddy, played by Nick Nolte, is a once-violent alcoholic who is sober. The only thing the brothers have in common is their hatred for their father. After a series of mixed martial arts (MMA) fights, the two brothers face off in a winner-take-all …

Movie Six actors play three roles over 30 years in a thriller about Nazis, Israeli spies and lots of lies in The Debt. Helen Mirren plays a retired Mossad agent named Rachel who is honored for her role in the assassination of a Nazi war criminal in 1965. Thirty years have passed, but questions remain. Did she and associate Stephan (Tom Wilkinson) and others kill their target? Jessica Chastain plays a young Rachel as the suspense builds across two time periods. It’s a political thriller worth watching simply because it is so much smarter and more realistic than most movies. Consider it brain …

Movie Paul Rudd is part Forrest Gump, part Dude from The Big Lebowski as Ned, an immature man-child who drives his family crazy in Our Idiot Brother. Ned first lands at his sister Liz's house. Liz, played by Emily Mortimer, is an insecure Brooklyn mom married to Dylan (Steve Coogan). Ned quickly wears out his welcome and moves in with his sister Miranda (Elizabeth Banks), a writer for Vanity Fair. Finally, he joins his artsy, bisexual bohemian sister, Natalie, played by Zooey Deschanel. Ned has a knack for always saying or doing the wrong thing. He means well, but his sisters aren't putting …

Movie Conan the Barbarian is back. Bare-chested, bloody and brutal, it is everything you would expect from a franchise that helped launch Arnold Schwarzenegger's career 30 years ago. The new barbarian in town is Hawaiian actor Jason Momoa (HBO’s Game of Thrones), who breathes new life into the role of Conan. The long-haired actor, who looks as if he belongs on the cover of a Harlequin Romance, brings his muscular physique to a new legion of fans in 3-D. The story line is simple: An evil overlord massacres Conan’s village; Conan picks up a sword and slays everyone who stands in the way of his …

Rise of the Planet of the Apes Chimps, gorillas and other primates take some mind-altering drugs and give a big, hairy smackdown to the humans in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. James Franco plays a scientist trying to find a cure for Alzheimer's disease, which has stricken his father (played by John Lithgow). Franco’s character rescues a newborn test chimp and names him Caesar.  Caesar grows up to be so smart that he is sent to a “primate shelter”—ape prison. Caesar gets angry, then uses his brain to rally the other apes and get even. The great Andy Serkis, best known as Gollum from The Lord…

Movie — Cowboys and Aliens Double-O-Seven star Daniel Craig forms an unlikely alliance with Harrison Ford and Olivia Wilde in the sci-fi/western genre mashup Cowboys and Aliens. Craig plays an 1870s outlaw with amnesia who wakes up with a alien bracelet and figures out he can zap space monsters with the flick of a wrist. The monsters are bad and the cowboys are good. A classic western with an intergalactic twist. John Favreu directs the move and, as an added bonus, Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard and Brian Grazier have their hands all over it, making this a trailblazing future classic. The CGI …