Movie Reviews

In Brief: Chiwetel Ejiofor and Audrey Tautou star in Stephen Frears' 2003 thriller Dirty Pretty Things. It's a story about the seedy underside of London as experienced by illegal and barely legal immigrants who work at a posh but very unsavory hotel, one that serves as a center for criminal activities. This ranges from sketchy…

The Story: Fact-based drama about the JFK assassination and its immediate aftermath. The Lowdown: Visceral, fast-paced recreation of the events that took place over the course of Nov. 22-25, 1963. Parkland opts to plunge the viewer into the chaos and confusion of the tragic events, and the results are remarkable.

The Story: A goofball inventor must stop a nefarious genius from using his invention for evil purposes. The Lowdown: A dull sequel sucked dry of everything that made its predecessor interesting.

The Story: A very wayward kind of romantic comedy about a guy who tries to change his ways, especially his proclivity for porn, for a woman he thinks is his dream girl. The Lowdown: Joseph Gordon-Levitt's writing-directing debut is a remarkably assured affair that is also unusually blunt in terms of dealing with sex and…

In Brief: Guillermo del Toro's stylish Blade II (2002) looks better today than it did on its release. The plot is solid and the acting moreso. The story follows daywalking vampire and vampire hunter Blade (Wesley Snipes), who is recruited by the vampire nation to help fight a force that threatens both them and the…

In Brief: Colorful, almost entirely fictional Harry Houdini biopic that was mostly an excuse to team newlyweds Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh in a movie. It's harmless and reasonably entertaining — in a very 1950s way — but if you approach it as any kind of historical (or even perceptive) look at Houdini, you're watching…

In Brief: Here we have a double feature consisting of two tight pre-Code mysteries (each barely over 60 minutes). First up is William Powell in Michael Curtiz' stylish Private Detective 62 (1933), a typical snappy Warner Bros. melodrama that finds gumshoe Powell coming to the aid of society dame Margaret Lindsay — after first being…

In Brief: Volker Schlöndorff's first film, Young Törless (1966), wears the director's training with French New Wave filmmakers on its sleeve, though not in a bad way, and with a decidedly German slant. It also marks the significant change in tone in German cinema wherein filmmakers shifted from ignoring the country's past to addressing it.…

The Story: A down-on-his-luck ex-basketball coach reluctantly takes a job coaching an American breakdancing troupe for a world competition. The Lowdown: An overlong, mostly forgettable dance flick that adds nothing to the oversaturated teen dance drama besides uplifting sports movie schmaltz.

The Story: When his daughter and her friend are kidnapped, a man takes matters into his own hands. The Lowdown: This is really a first-rate lurid thriller that harms itself by trying too hard to be more significant than it is. Still, the mystery and thriller aspects offer sufficient compensation to make it worth a…

The Story: A woman finds her romance with a seemingly compatible man undermined when it turns out that he's the ex-husband of a new friend of hers. The Lowdown: Unfailingly pleasant but awkwardly plotted film that ultimately wins out on the strength of James Gandolfini and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

The Story: A 3-D documentary about surfing. The Lowdown: The success of this is almost certainly related to the audience's level of enthusiasm for surfing. Yes, the surfing footage is impressive, but 90 minutes of it is a bit much if the topic doesn't interest you.

The Story: An in-depth look at the life of mysterious writer J.D. Salinger. The Lowdown: A scatterbrained, confusing documentary full of hearsay.

In Brief: Exorcist author William Peter Blatty brought his own Exorcist sequel novel Legion to the screen in 1990 as The Exorcist III. (Since its story follows an entirely different tangent, it doesn't have to consider Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) in its plotting.) For my money, the result is the scariest, best-acted and certainly…

In Brief: Critically reviled at the time of its release — especially for something that was clearly Oscar-bait — Robert Benton's The Human Stain (2003) isn't so much a bad movie as it's an underwhelming one. It's a film that never takes off due to Benton's decidedly old-fashioned filmmaking and its overbearing attempt to be…

In Brief: Ingmar Bergman's 1975 film of Mozart's The Magic Flute is a marvelously theatrical — but not stagey — incarnation of the opera. Your fondness for it will depend in large part on how well you like Mozart and this opera in particular.

In Brief: Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited (2007) is one of the filmmaker's best works — and a film that flirts with the term "perfect." Complaints that it doesn't "go anywhere" and that it is "twee" (a favorite term of Anderson detractors) seem to miss the point. The film — or the characters (who pretty…

The Story: A continuation of 2010's Insidious — with the focus changed to the father. The Lowdown: One of the most beautifully connected sequels I've ever seen, Insidious: Chapter 2 is everything I hoped for and more. Easily as creepy as the first film and quite possibly a better movie in the bargain.

The Story: A mob snitch and his violent family are sent to a quiet French village by the witness protection program. The Lowdown: A mean-spirited, listless attempt at mixing French whimsy and American violence.

The Story: A look into the lives of three characters attempting to deal with sex addiction. The Lowdown: Solid performances overcome most of the problems in this frequently absorbing drama — with comedy overtones — that clearly wants to be more than it can quite pull off.

The Story: A woman obsessed with Jane Austen's world — especially as concerns Mr. Darcy — blows her life savings on a trip to Austenland in England, which promises the real Austen experience. The Lowdown: A frequently charming little romantic comedy that wants to poke fun at the genre, while appealing to fans. You probably…