By JAMES DAWSON Front Row Features Film Critic Directed and edited to look as if the entire movie is a single extended shot, the technically dazzling “Birdman” is a bitter black comedy that soars when it’s satirical but sinks when it’s soapy. Cleverly scripted barbs about  [...]

By ANGELA DAWSON Front Row Features HOLLYWOOD—In the colorful, folkloric, Latin-infused animated feature “The Book of Life,” Zoe Saldana provides the voice of Maria, a beautiful villager who has captured the charms of two men: Manolo and Joaquin. When two spirits take sides in the outcome of the  [...]

By ANGELA DAWSON Front Row Features HOLLYWOOD—Miles Teller likens “Whiplash,” the drama in which he plays a jazz drummer student who engages in a battle of wills with his hypercritical teacher, played by J.K. Simmons, to a boxing movie. “There are just these two guys going head to head with [...]

By ANGELA DAWSON Front Row Features HOLLYWOOD—James Marsden and Michelle Monaghan play a star-crossed couple that rekindles their love affair 20 years after they went their separate ways in the romantic drama “The Best of Me,” the latest weeper based on a Nicholas Sparks novel. The drama, set in  [...]