Movies

Seeing Ghosts Wherever He Looks
‘ParaNorman,’ About a Boy and Zombies, With Elaine Stritch
NYT Critics' Pick


A scene from "ParaNorman," directed by Sam Fell and Chris Butler.
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: August 16, 2012

“ParaNorman,” a beautiful-looking, charmingly heartfelt 3-D stop-motion animation about a boy and his ghouls, comes with an assortment of hair-raising frights. Some of these are just the flesh-and-blood people in Norman’s life, the bullies and teachers and even relatives who, with degrees of impatience and love, chastise the 11-year-old for his unusually morbid habits. Norman, a sprout whose black hair stands at attention as if he were in a state of perpetual alarm (he is voiced with vivid emotion by Kodi Smit-McPhee), can’t help but be a little creepy. After all, he doesn’t just see dead people, he also hangs out with them, sometimes while watching creature-features on the family TV. Moar

Real-Life Creepiness: Just Following Orders
Movie Review: ‘Compliance,’ Directed by Craig Zobel
NYT Critics' Pick


Anatomy of a Scene: 'Compliance': Craig Zobel, the writer and director of "Compliance," narrates a scene from his film.
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS
Published: August 16, 2012

Confining extremes of human behavior to a single, drab room, “Compliance,” the squirmy sophomore feature from the writer and director Craig Zobel, is a slow-motion punch to the groin. As such, it’s fitting that one of our first sights is a large “NO” stenciled in the parking lot of a fast-food joint in suburban Ohio: as the film progresses, the word becomes a silent mantra for viewers who can’t quite believe what they’re seeing. Moar

A Fantasy Land Where Love and Betrayal Reign
‘Painted Skin: The Resurrection,’ by Wuershan


By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS
Published: August 16, 2012

Despite its obsession with a triumvirate of powerful women, “Painted Skin: The Resurrection,” Wuershan’s fantastical follow-up to Gordon Chan’s popular 2008 original, plays like the death knell of feminism. Not that this is likely to be of concern to the film’s target audience, whose appetite for ancient Chinese ghost stories is more vulnerable to a scarcity of special effects than to a surfeit of regressive sexual attitudes. Moar

O! My!

Nakedness in Dance, Taken to Extremes

Benjamin Asriel, left, and Burr Johnson in “Fort Blossom revisited.”
By ALASTAIR MACAULAY
Published: August 16, 2012

HOW do you react to the look of a naked body onstage? Thirty-four years ago, as part of a friend’s bachelor party, I went to a London strip club with a group of seven other men. We were all in our early 20s; most of them were distinctly upper-crust; some qualified as what the English call chinless wonders and Hooray Henrys. Moar