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Stories and analysis from The Northern Express Herald.

Movie review: X+Y

A loss of focus turns this small English feature from an excellent film into a routine and mediocre one about half-way through, but its opening reels have touches of understated genius about them and it is full of undeniably moving moments.

Movie review: Home

Looking for light, cheerful entertainment for the littlies these holidays? Meet Home, the latest animated family film from DreamWorks Animation.

Movie review: A Little Chaos

Free of the Harry Potter juggernaut, British actor and director Alan Rickman has finally returned to the director's chair, almost two decades after his directing debut with The Winter Guest.

Movie review: Still Life

Chameleon character actor Marsan has a long list of supporting-role credits in big films (Sherlock Holmes; Mission Impossible III) and small (X+Y), which releases here next week.

Will Smith's new movie a bit of a swindle

Will Smith and Aussie It Girl Margot Robbie team up in a sleek slice of escapism from directors John Requa and Glenn Ficarra, the co-writers and directors of I Love You Phillip Morris and Crazy, Stupid, Love.

Movie review: Treasure Island

More theatrical than knuckle-whiteningly dramatic, this NT Live* production of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic 1883 adventure book is nevertheless an eye-poppingly brilliant display of stagecraft with a show-stealing turn from a remote-controlled animatr

Snowden film 'brave, bold'

About 20 minutes into this electrifying, often terrifying documentary, the film-maker shows for the first time the man we have come to know as Edward Snowden.

'Fifty Shades': Herald's verdict

If hype, 'likes' and advanced ticket sales are any indication of success, box offices around the world will get a boost this weekend with the release of the much anticipated adaptation of author EL James' "mummy porn" phenomenon, Fifty Shades of Grey.

Movie review: Me, Myself and Mum

As french as croissants aux amandes and so extravagantly theatrical that you can practically smell the greasepaint in the cinema, this small and goofy French comedy follows the struggles of a young teenager to come to terms with his sexual identity.

Movie review: The Crucible

Great drama speaks to any day in which it is performed. The second-most famous play by the great Arthur Miller deals with the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, in the late 17th century.

Movie review: Foxcatcher

There are times in this brilliantly acted and understated psychological drama when it seems very little happens at all, but when the lights go up you're left reeling by the culmination of events that have quietly unfolded.

Movie review: Land Ho!

Unassuming and amiable, this road-trip buddy comedy, which played in the festival last year, belongs squarely in the sub-genre of very-low-budget American indies with untrained actors and improvised dialogue that has been dubbed mumblecore.

Movie review: Wild

Fed up with a lack of stimulating female leads in Hollywood, Reese Witherspoon formed a production company and started making her own work. She's created herself a doozy (and a deserved Oscar nomination) playing Cheryl Strayed in Wild.

Movie review: Still Alice

The recent movies that have looked at the impact of dementia - Away From Her, The Savages, Aurora Borealis, A Song For Martin, Lovely, Still - have tended to focus on the effect on those left behind as the light dies.

Movie review: Force Majeure

A searching examination of middle-class complacency and gender roles in an age of us-or-them individualism, this assured Swedish drama is the kind of film that's hard to watch and harder still to tear your eyes away from.