Joel Arnold

It's hard to shake the appeal of a plucky small town, underestimated by city folk, trying to pull one over on the outsiders. Set in the Newfoundland harbor of Tickle Head, the dramedy The Grand Seduction focuses on a community of just 120 people attempting to bring in jobs and ...

Jorge Quijano has one of the coolest office views in the Americas: the Pacific port entrance to the Panama Canal. The panoramic vista seems to help Quijano, who heads the Panama Canal Authority, see the bigger picture.

On the one hand, Quijano understands why Panama has run the canal so ...

It's always unfortunate to see potential wasted onscreen, in acting, writing, or directing. It's worse to see it happen all at once with artists universally known as capable of much more. God's Pocket, the directorial feature debut of Mad Men's John Slattery and featuring one of Philip Seymour Hoffman's last ...

A world-renowned pianist known for cracking under the pressure of performance sits down to play a concerto before a packed hall. Then he sees the message scrawled in red on his sheet music: "Play one wrong note and you die." The movie almost writes itself.

The premise of the confined ...

Animated movies excel in bringing to life the impossible stories, the ones drawn from fairy tales and mythology and the ones exploring the imaginary lives of creatures and things. It's an incredibly attractive notion, isn't it, to imagine there's a whole world going about its business, just out of sight?

If you'd told 10-year-old me there was going to be a movie all about Legos and the world they inhabit, I'd have been in line at the theater right then. Oh, it's not out until 2014? Okay, let me just build a time machine out of Legos and travel to ...

The face is the same, but the personality is different. It's a sobering, unfair truth that Vanetia (Maxine Peake) must confront about her husband. Again and again, in fact, once he's returned home from the hospital, after months in a coma and recovery in the wake of a rare kind ...

Given the feel-good themes of the average kids' movie — be yourself, follow the golden rule, love each other, blah blah blah — it's refreshing to see an animated comedy chuck that guck and focus on a real jerk. Not a misunderstood Princess Elsa, or a Wreck-It Ralph with a ...

Time-travel movies usually have a clear end in sight, some situation that needs fixing. Marty McFly needs his parents to get together; John Connor needs to avoid Terminators long enough to grow up; the guys from Hot Tub Time Machine need to stop messing up the past and get back ...

You like wacky, hyperreferential movies that tap the fan boy brainstem? Sure you do. So do we — which is why we had a pair of critics compare notes on what is already being hailed as one of the year's funniest films. Pour an imperial pint of your favorite beverage ...

There's a certain wonder in watching an artist known for a distinct voice, or for working with a specific set of tools, make a completely credible transition to something else.

Think of Will Ferrell turning in that surprisingly earnest, low-key performance in Stranger Than Fiction. Or Martin Scorsese paying vivid ...

Sebastian Silva's 2009 film The Maid examined the physical and psychological demands of working as a nearly indentured live-in housekeeper, and the toll taken by more than 20 years in the same household.

Perhaps in part because Silva based the film on his childhood growing up in Santiago, Chile, the ...

In a summer movie season that's been light with women in major roles, a Melissa McCarthy-Sandra Bullock buddy-cop comedy sounds like a welcome change of pace. Add in the fact that this movie is Paul Feig's follow-up to Bridesmaids, and you have something especially interesting.

Well, not to overstate ...

Magic is compelling when it actually amazes, accomplishing the difficult feat of freeing its viewers from disbelief and letting them bask in the wonder of seeing what they know is impossible. Movies work the same way, and part of the equation for both is developing the right expectations. The promised ...

Well, they did say this one was going to be different.

After The Hangover II essentially duplicated the structure of the first movie --three guys piecing together a night of debauchery and mayhem none of them can entirely remember — director Todd Phillips promised that the third would go in ...

Writer Joel Arnold is surveying the scene at the Tribeca Film Festival, which runs in New York City through April 28. He'll be filing occasional dispatches for Monkey See.

I keep going back to the documentaries. Out of the 14 films I've seen here so far, the documentaries have ...

Writer Joel Arnold is surveying the scene at the Tribeca Film Festival, which runs in New York City through April 28. He'll be filing occasional dispatches for Monkey See.

Birding has been getting some attention lately. Last year's HBO documentary Birders: The Central Park Effect, plus various appreciations this ...

Writer Joel Arnold is surveying the scene at the Tribeca Film Festival, which runs in New York City through April 28. He'll be filing occasional dispatches for Monkey See.

At Tribeca over the weekend, I was initially reluctant to seek out The Kill Team, a documentary focused on American soldiers ...

Writer Joel Arnold is surveying the scene at the Tribeca Film Festival, which runs in New York City through April 28. He'll be filing occasional dispatches for Monkey See.

Beginning in Bordeaux and traveling as far as western China as it tracks the reach of today's global wine market, Red ...

This week, the Tribeca Film Festival kicks off its 12th year. With a shorter history than Sundance or Cannes — the two major festivals that flank it on the calendar — Tribeca has grown in fits and starts since its 2002 launch as an effort to revitalize Lower Manhattan ...