Articles by Sam Adams

James Franco is loosening up. Read more

Labyrinthine and torturous, the “Saw” series increasingly has come to resemble the baroque booby traps laid by its serial-killing mastermind, Jigsaw (Tobin Bell). Read more

There’s film noir, and then there’s “Max Payne,” which is so dark it looks as if the negative were dropped in a puddle of ink. Read more

As Poppy, the fluttering, free-spirited elementary school teacher at the heart of director Mike Leigh’s new film, “Happy-Go-Lucky,” British actress Sally Hawkins glows like a miniature sun, radiating an infectious sense of joy and a ravenous hunger for life. Read more

Guy Ritchie’s aggressively stylized, testosterone-addled movies careen from one steroidal encounter to the next. Read more

IF ALL you know of Ken Russell is his penchant for rococo imagery – the goat-headed, multi-eyed Christ of “Altered States,” say, or Roger Daltrey riding a giant phallus in “Lisztomania” – it might come as a shock to discover he has his origins in documentary. Read more

RALPH FIENNES is not an easy man to get close to. Read more

All comeback stories are unlikely, but Alejandro Escovedo’s is more so than most. Read more

ARI FOLMAN’S “Waltz With Bashir,” which screens tonight at the Toronto International Film Festival, straddles many boundaries: between memory and dream, history and memoir, fact and fiction. Read more