Reviewing the Drama: Broadway, Off-Broadway, Ballet, Movies, and TV Reviews

I really liked this movie. On the surface, this might strike you as an alien movie, but Ripley doesn't have a gun. Instead, our heroine is armed with a brain and the ability to learn and communicate. The always impressive Amy Adams ( The Fighter , Nocturnal Animals ) plays cunning linguist Louise, who, when alien objects touch down in 12 places across the globe, is enlisted by the military to try to figure out what their purpose on earth is. (By the way, Adams is fearless in this unglamorous role.)  Louise joins a team of military men, led by Colonel Weber ( Forest Whitaker ) and Agent Halpern ( Michael Stuhlbarg ), and scientists, including theoretical physicist, Ian ( Jeremy Renner ), who are all trying to save human kind. Written by Eric Heisserer (based on the Ted Chiang story, "Story of Your Life") and directed by Denis Villeneuve ( Enemy ), the story is interspersed with flashes of Louise's home life, which includes daughter Hannah. As the movie contin...

Forest Whitaker to Make Broadway Debut Academy Award-winner Forest Whitaker ( The Last King of Scotland ) will make his Broadway debut this spring in a revival of Eugene O'Neill 's Hughie . Exact dates, a theatre and a co-star for the two-hander have yet to be announced, but we do know the production will be directed by Michael Grandage ( Red , The Cripple of Inishmaan ). As mentioned on Theater Mania , Hughie takes place in a hotel lobby, and focuses on Erie (Whitaker), a hustler mourning the death of the hotel's old clerk (the titular Hughie) as he talks with the new clerk, Charlie. Additional details will be announced in the coming months. Drama League "Up Close" Series Guests for the Drama League's "Up Close" series, in which artists are interviewed by their collaborators, have been announced. (I went to an Up Close event last year in which Steven Pasquale interviewed his The Bridges of Madison County collaborator, Jason Robert Brown....