You don’t need to be an opera aficionado to enjoy the recent Metropolitan Opera Live in HD performance of Gioachino Rossini’s Le Comte Ory.  The high-definition (HD) broadcast made it seem like the far-away performers were in the same building with the theatergoers. Regal's 21-screen theater in Lincolnshire had the transmission last Saturday afternoon and plans an encore at 6:30 p.m. April 27. One of Rossini’s rarely performed works made its debut at the Met last month. The brilliantly conceived production was directed by Tony Award-winner Bartlett Sher, whose effort brought great pleasure as…

December was Jeff Bridges' month. Almost one year after winning his first Oscar for Crazy Heart and less than one week after he appeared in dual roles in the flimsy but eye-catching Tron: Legacy, the Dude returns with an eye-patch in the Coen Brothers breezy, entertaining new Western True Grit. The brothers and Bridges haven't worked together since his iconic performance in 1998's The Big Lebowski. This time around, Bridges plays equal parts gruff and funny in the mostly solid but somewhat arbitrary True Grit. Returning to big-name casting after A Serious Man, the latest from Joel and Ethan …

The King's Speech is the type of historical biopic that gives history movies a good name. It's not at all surprising that it's on the Oscar shortlist for several little golden statues. After all, where would Oscar season be without at least one critically well-loved flick about the British monarchy? Make no mistake though, The King's Speech goes well beyond the history genre. The story of a begrudging, mismatched friendship set in a meticulously detailed historical backdrop The King's Speech is more than worthy all the Oscar talk.                    The film works because it packs a lot of …

Black Swan is a dizzying and disturbing exercise in art-house horror, but despite some great performances it can't quite hold itself together. It's a film that's lost in wild directorial pirouettes, visceral detail and nightmarish imagery. It may be director Darren Aronofsky's most disturbing film yet, but it's definitely not his strongest, despite the best efforts of his prima ballerina. After a celebrated realistic hiatus with The Wrestler (2008), Aronofsky is back to surrealism. In his latest offering, he examines the psychological underbelly of New York's highly competitive ballet world …