Visual Arts
Emily Summars

Daily, ongoing

Action
Rod Lott
With the John Cougar Mellencamp song "Cherry Bomb," our hearts were really thumping. With the film Cherry Bomb, however, it barely registers a pulse.

Action
Rod Lott
Preceding the start of The Expendables 2 is an ad for its tie-in video game. Why bother playing such a thing when so many sequences of the the movie make you feel like you're doing so already? I mean that as a compliment, because as directed by Simon West (The Mechanic), the sequel’s 15-minute prologue is so unrelenting in nonstop action that it’s likely to turn you giddy.

Comedy
Rod Lott
Meryl Streep is in a rut — not the actress, who's arguably still atop her game in her fifth decade of screen stardom, but the character she plays in Hope Springs. Long married to frowny sad sack Arnold (Lincoln's Tommy Lee Jones, not exactly stretching), Kay feels more like a roommate than a wife. They don't even share a bedroom any more.

Drama
Phil Bacharach
Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke isn't the obvious choice for a movie about love at its weightiest and most profound. In previous works like Funny Games, The Piano Teacher, The White Ribbon and Caché, he has crafted cinematic nipple twists that tweak audiences while examining humankind at its cruelest.