Unstoppable
There's a train. It's long, with lots of cars loaded with toxic chemicals. And nobody's driving it as it hurtles toward heavily populated parts of Pennsylvania. And Denzel Washington and Chris Pine are the only two guys who can chase it down and stop it. That's all there is to Tony Scott's lightning-fast runaway train thriller, Unstoppable -- and that's enough. With Scott shooting and cutting this minimalist thriller to an hour and 35 minutes of heavy metal flying at you and the cool, collected old-timer Frank (Washington) and his distracted trainee Will (Chris Pine of Star Trek) jumping from one car to another, dodging hazards at rail crossings, this race against the clock works.
Waiting for Superman is a fearless assault on the American public-school system -- and the teachers' unions that make change impossible. This documentary by Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) has the urgency of a thriller and the poignancy of a tear-jerker.
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, written and directed by Woody Allen, is a meandering and rather pointless movie, yet it's easy to stick with it and enjoy it. The cast includes Josh Brolin, Naomi Watts, Anthony Hopkins and Freida Pinto.
