Rex Reed
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Rex Reed | January 18, 2011 | 9:01 pm
Perfection is not an overused word in the cabaret world, but I use it without reservation when making even a feeble effort to describe Christine Ebersole's dynamic, touching, beautifully conceived new act at the Café Carlyle. Unencumbered by the phony titles and pointless concepts that plague other "theme" shows, she simply steps to the postage-stamp stage, splendid and glowing bright like a sunflower nourished by neon, shaking her fluffy blond coif in her above-the-knee... MORE >
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Rex Reed | January 18, 2011 | 8:57 pm
Painstakingly shot, frame by frame, and with accurate writing and impeccable performances, and guided by the great Australian director Peter Weir's impressive trademark attention to detail, The Way Back saves January from the dumpster and triumphs as the first great film of... MORE >
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Rex Reed | January 18, 2011 | 8:49 pm
After a string of flops, the lovely, accomplished and underappreciated Natalie Portman achieved something of a career breakthrough in the pretentious horror flick Black Swan. Now, before the impact has worn off, and on the verge of an Oscar nomination, she crumbles like a mildewed crumpet. Short of breaking into the editing lab and destroying the negative, she should have done everything legally possible to stop the ill-timed release of a vulgar, stupid pile... MORE >
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Rex Reed | January 11, 2011 | 7:55 pm
In the musical husband-wife tradition of Jackie Cain and Roy Kral, and John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey, we now have ace pianist Eric Comstock and his wife, Barbara Fasano, who pop the cork on the 2011 cabaret season with a new act at the Algonquin called "Helluva Town," a compilation of carefully picked tunes about the love-hate relationship New Yorkers have with the noisiest, filthiest and most exciting town in... MORE >
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Rex Reed | January 11, 2011 | 7:44 pm
If you haven't reached the end of your attention span for dysfunctional families, here comes another one in Richard Levine's Every Day. Liev Schreiber is absolutely perfect as Ned, a well-paid TV scriptwriter who appears to have it all--colorful job, perfect home, loving wife and two mature, intelligent sons with promising futures. But beneath the surface, Ned is in crisis, and festering scabs are ready to erupt; after 19 years of career and marriage... MORE >
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Rex Reed | January 11, 2011 | 7:37 pm
At the movies, January is traditionally the dullest month of the year--a dumping ground for the leftover flotsam that wasn't good (or commercially viable) enough to release in time for box office potential or awards consideration at the end of the previous year. Get ready for another... MORE >
The word "goodbye" takes on a somber and rueful new meaning as I begin the annual task of wrapping up an old year by waving adios to the man with the scythe. We lost so many famous and celebrated people in 2010 that by midsummer I already had 35 pages of names. "Attention must be paid," wrote Arthur Miller in Death of a Salesman, and that applies to one and... MORE >
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Rex Reed | December 14, 2010 | 10:15 pm
Our esteemed critic picks the best and worst films of the year. Check out the slideshow versions below, complete with links to Rex's reviews. Rex Reed's Perfect 10 Rex Reed's Imperfect 10 The... MORE >
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Rex Reed | December 14, 2010 | 10:14 pm
Although we are in the midst of the annual December gridlock of last-minute releases glutting the market in time to qualify for a marathon of critical and industry awards shows, this will be my last movie column of 2010. Therefore, I will adjust my glasses, gulp an aspirin and endeavor, by popular demand, to ignore release dates and clock in with a roundup of the final main events on the overcrowded year-end calendar: RABBIT... MORE >
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Rex Reed | December 7, 2010 | 10:10 pm
Nobody I know is ready for synthetic snow and popcorn balls, but the Rockefeller tree is already lit up like the front of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, so there must be a reindeer on the way. Michael Feinstein certainly delivers some early Yuletide cheer in his annual holiday show at Loew's Regency. This one, on view for all and sundry through Dec. 30, is called "Swinging in the Holidays." He means it and... MORE >
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Rex Reed | December 7, 2010 | 10:00 pm
Ostriches with heads buried in the sand, or even moviegoers seeking diversionary entertainment stripped of all burdensome snags such as thought-provoking issues about the way we live now, be warned in advance: The Company Men is a timely, intelligently written, beautifully acted film of great sensitivity and wisdom about corporate downsizing that will make you think. It's not your grandfather's Oldsmobile, but it does make you wonder about the meaning of the word "progress."... MORE >
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Rex Reed | December 7, 2010 | 9:59 pm
The Fighter is the gravel-kicking true story of boxer Micky Ward; his wasted, battered, has-been older brother, Dickie Eklund, who threw away his career in the ring on booze, drugs and whores; and the scabby, loudmouthed trailer-trash family of creeps who drove them both to success and destruction, in equal doses. It's a boxing comeback movie with every cliché in the book, directed by David O.... MORE >
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Rex Reed | November 30, 2010 | 10:04 pm
I Love You, Phillip Morris is an unbelievable-but-true black comedy about scams, lies and true love that proves gay-themed Hollywood sagas don't all have to end in suicide, although this one does end in prison. Jim Carrey plays fearless, freewheeling Steven Russell, who is currently serving the ninth year of a 144-year sentence as a career criminal for a multitude of offenses and four successful escapes in five years to join his lover, a... MORE >
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Rex Reed | November 30, 2010 | 10:04 pm
Dancing Swan Lake, as any ballerina can testify, is painful, torturous and stressful. But to my knowledge, no Swan Queen has yet plunged into psychosexual insanity and started killing off the corps de ballet. In the overrated, overwrought and overhyped Black Swan, director Darren (The Wrestler) Aronofsky advances his dark passion for exploring twisted souls in torment, substituting the backstage melodrama of the ballet for the brutality of the ring. He's been watching too... MORE >
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Rex Reed | November 30, 2010 | 10:04 pm
Based on one of the most publicized and speculative missing-persons cases in the annals of New York's unsolved murder files, All Good Things is a fascinating, well-documented combination love story-murder mystery that will leave you guessing, much like the real-life case itself, 28 years after the fact. Sharply directed by Andrew Jarecki and starring Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst, two of the screen's most talented young actors, as ill-fated lovers caught in a tangled... MORE >
