Gemma Arterton

Review: “Byzantium”

Neil Jordan’s “Byzantium,” the filmmaker’s first return to vampires since 1994’s massive Cruise-Pitt success “Interview with the Vampire,” is the best kind of genre film, which is to say the kind of genre film that makes you forget it’s a genre film. Yes, we’ve encountered variations of this story onscreen dozens of times before, but …

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Review: “Unfinished Song”

Stephen Walker and Sally George’s 2007 documentary “Young @ Heart,” about a chorus of Massachusetts senior citizens who perform pop covers, was so genuinely moving and respectful of its subjects that I suppose it was just a matter of time before a fiction filmmaker hijacked the premise for a manipulative, cloying feature. That’s exactly what …

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Review: “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters”

It certainly seems as though more effort went into conceiving the basic premise for “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters”—the eponymous fairytale characters grow up to professionally battle the species that nearly roasted them to death as children—than writing the screenplay itself. Not only does writer Tommy Wirkola (who also directs) employ a paper-thin plot, he …

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