by Bob Green

The Doris Duke Theatre offers up a month of luvin’ movies in “Dangerously Romantic: Films to Fall in Love With.” Comedies, dramas, fantasies all make an appearance these next two weeks, one with a complete real-life dinner, in celebration of Cupid’s month. The Weekly, lovers ourselves, checked out a few of them, and comments on the whole batch.

by Matthew Dekneef

Steven Soderbergh movies are well-made. Always.

OpeningContinuingDoris Duke TheatreMovie MuseumMovie CafeMamiya Theatre A selection of films currently playing in island theaters. Unattributed film synopses indicate movies not yet reviewed by HW staff.

OpeningContinuingDoris Duke TheatreMovie MuseumMovie Cafe A selection of films currently playing in island theaters. Unattributed film synopses indicate movies not yet reviewed by HW staff.

by Bob Green

Superbly acted, elliptically-plotted and visually candid, Shame, starring the priapic Michael Fassbender and a surprising Carey Mulligan (Drive), is getting all the world’s press because of Fassbender’s sometimes nudity and portrayal of sex-as-Hell. That is to say, it’s about the hellish world of a sex addict, New York division.

by Don Wallace

Set during the 1937 Japanese siege of Nanking, The Flowers of War pivots around two groups of very different Chinese women who must rely on the stereotypical drunken Western rogue male, played by Christian Bale, to rescue them from a fate worse than death. Given that one group is a band of famous whores, the Ladies of the Qin Huai River’s Jade Paradise, and the second consists of a dozen helpless convent girls, you might think we’re in for some mildly titillating banter, a scary moment or two, sealed by a chaste kiss.

OpeningContinuingDoris Duke TheatreMovie Museum A selection of films currently playing in island theaters. Unattributed film synopses indicate movies not yet reviewed by HW staff.

by Don Wallace

A film named Carnage directed by Roman Polanski–the man who gave us Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown and a scandal over his rape of a 13 year old girl–would seem to raise expectations in predictable ways. Oh boy, you might think.

by Rory Wallace

My first, and pretty much only experience riding a horse took place on a cloudy day on a worn-down dirt road outside a tiny French village called Borderune. I rode alongside my girlfriend and a small posse of old French ladies, taking in the beautiful countryside, when our guide began galloping ahead of us, causing all of our horses to do the same.

by Bob Green

In The Iron Lady–good, if slightly muddled, slightly too long–Meryl Streep (a Golden Globe winner for this role) gives the best film performance since Daniel Day Lewis in My Left Foot. And she keeps on giving.

OpeningContinuingDoris Duke TheatreMovie Museum A selection of films currently playing in island theaters. Unattributed film synopses indicate movies not yet reviewed by HW staff.

by Matthew Dekneef

Let’s begin at the end. The screen cuts black.

by Ryan Senaga

In Young Adult, Charlize Theron plays Mavis Gary, one of the most loathsome human beings to ever walk the Earth in couture high heels. She’s a semi-successful young adult novelist renowned for a series of books written for teenage girls about high school society, a franchise that is on its last legs.

OpeningContinuingDoris Duke TheatreMovie MuseumMovie Cafe A selection of films currently playing in island theaters. Unattributed film synopses indicate movies not yet reviewed by HW staff.

by Ryan Senaga

Sober up from the cray shenanigans of Mission: Impossible–Ghost Protocol with the much less hyper, but still thoroughly absorbing, chess game of a thriller Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Adapted from John le Carré’s classic ‘60s Cold War thriller, the film follows secret agents who conduct dry, British espionage/cat-and-mouse games without shiny BMW prototypes or gravity-defying glue gloves.

by Matthew Dekneef

I have a special spot in my heart for Cameron Crowe. Over the years, he’s taught me how to be one of many messy teens (Fast Times at Ridgemont High), woo someone with a stereo (Say Anything), be a directionless twenty-something (Singles), question your job and its purpose (Jerry Maguire), all while belting every word to Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” (Almost Famous).

Opening Continuing Doris Duke Theatre Movie Museum Movie Cafe A selection of films currently playing in island theaters. Unattributed film synopses indicate movies not yet reviewed by HW staff.

by Bob Green

Until its last quarter hour, you won’t find a better, more beautifully realized, more intricate film than helmer David Fincher’s English-language version of writer Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo–the runaway best-seller pulp potboiler made into a Swedish film (also excellent) two years ago. The first hour is near-perfection in laying out Larsson’s rather old-fashioned plot in terms of 2lst-century cinematic techniques–which this film buff, anyway, thinks are well-nigh breathtaking.

by Don Wallace

That I actually enjoyed the trailers while waiting for Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows was potentially a bad sign. Of course the new “Borat” movie will be simply irresistible, but Battleship?

by Ryan Senaga

After what, surprisingly, has been over a decade, it’s become a movie theater comfort to see Tom Cruise determinedly jumping off tall heights and just plain running as quickly as his almost 50-year-old legs will take him. (Can you believe he’s freaking 49?!) Mission: Impossible–Ghost Protocol is the fourth in the franchise, and, although much has been made about co-star Jeremy Renner taking over the leading action figure man reins, it’s still Cruise’s show all the way.

by Bob Green & Matthew Dekneef

Film Review / “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” As for films this past year, it was more a whimper in between. Within are those that actually had a voice.

OpeningContinuingDoris Duke TheatreMovie MuseumMovie Cafe A selection of films currently playing in island theaters. Unattributed film synopses indicate movies not yet reviewed by HW staff.

by Ryan Senaga

Film Review / The makers of the ensemble cast romantic comedy Valentine’s Day, which revolves around Feb. 14, now bring us New Year’s Eve, an ensemble cast romantic comedy, which revolves around Dec.

by Matthew Dekneef

Film Review / Based on a duo of memoirs by Colin Clark, My Week with Marilyn is a breezy 99-minute look behind the behind-the-scenes making of 1957 picture The Prince and the Showgirl, in which a young Clark lands a tiny assistant job on the highly anticipated Sir Laurence Olivier comedy and an unexpected glimpse into a Hollywood icon’s psyche. But before seeing, don’t forget that just three seconds ago at the box office you asked for a ticket to My Week with Marilyn, not My Entire Life Spent From Beginning to End Forever and Ever Until Eternity with Marilyn.