Movie Reviews

The Story: A father raises his six children in the wilderness under a rigorous system of physical and intellectual training until the untimely death of the clan’s matriarch leads them to hop on a tour bus named "Steve" to see that her final wishes are honored. The Lowdown: Little Miss Sunshine for the Ivy League set, Captain Fantastic is…

The Story: A nebbishy teen joins an app that challenges her to more and more elaborate (and dangerous) dares for cash. The Lowdown: A flaccid thriller full of toothless teenage drama, floppy high jinks and flimsy characters.

In Brief: The first of three attempts to adapt Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend — and easily the most successful — The Last Man on Earth stars Vincent Price as the lone survivor of a plague that turns the afflicted into vampiric ghouls. A far more faithful adaptation of Matheson's story than The Omega Man or the more recent Will Smith version (which kept the…

In Brief: Fast Times at Ridgemont High should be something of a known quantity to audiences at this point, if only because it was so massively influential — though not universally well-received — on its initial run. Arguably the quintessential '80s high school movie, the impact of its unflinching look at suburban adolescence has not diminished with time.…

In Brief: One of the best of Hitchcock's pre-Hollywood output at Gaumont British, Sabotage sees the director's mastery of suspense on full display. In an interview with Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock revealed that a notable scene in which a young boy and an old lady are killed (along with a bus full of people) drew ire from audiences…

When you look at David Cronenberg’s nearly 30-year-old Videodrome (can it really be that long ago?), it’s incredible to realize how comparatively quaint the technology in the film is. It’s also hard not to realize that the points — warnings really — Cronenberg was making about technology overtaking our lives have only become more and…

The Story: A young man afflicted with autism learns to speak through an obsessive affinity for Disney animation. The Lowdown: One of the most moving documentaries I've come across, Life, Animated tugs at the heartstrings for all the right reasons.

The Story: Two friends decide to run away from home and explore France in a homemade mobile home. The Lowdown: A gentle and intelligent tale of the confusion of young adulthood told with Gondry's signature heart and whimsy.

The Story: In 1988, three preteen friends started shooting a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark in their spare time. Thirty-five years later, they finally finished it. The Lowdown: Uplifting and inspiring, while still personal and sincere, Raiders! is a warts-and-all look at what it takes to realize a dream.

The Story: The crew of the starship Enterprise find themselves stranded on a distant planet controlled by a violent maniac. The Lowdown: A glossy and occasionally fun summer action flick that suffers from a general incoherency and disposability.

The Story: The Bronx-born son of a Jewish jeweler bounces between careers and romantic entanglements in 1930s Hollywood and New York while pining after The One That Got Away . The Lowdown: More Midnight in Paris than Blue Jasmine, Cafe Society is not the Woody Allen classic it could have been. But when it works, it works.

The Story: When acorn-addled squirrel Scrat initiates a potential apocalypse, Manny the mammoth and the rest of his herd set out to save the world. The Lowdown: How much do you love your kids? It must be a lot if you're willing to sit through this dreck to please them.

The Story: A creepy terror relegated to the shadows is stalking the family of a traumatized young woman. The Lowdown: A poorly scripted, dully acted horror film full of cheap scares and zero atmosphere.

Conceptually, They Live is probably John Carpenter's best film. Unfortunately, as is often the case with Carpenter, the concept is better than the execution. Of the "modern" horrormeisters, Carpenter has always been the lightweight. The closest he got to a theme seemed to be in Halloween, with its implicit message that girls who "fooled around" get offed by…

On its initial release in 1945, New York Times critic Bosley Crowther panned Albert Lewin's adaptation of Oscar Wilde's notable novel on the grounds of the production's "mawkish pomposity" and glacial pacing. He's got a point, but things aren't as dire as he makes them sound. This Dorian Gray may not be perfect: Lewin's direction is somewhat overblown,…

This is the movie that placed Varda in the ranks of the New Wave filmmakers. Its concept is to follow the vapid title character, a pop singer, in faux real time (the title claims two hours, the film is 90 minutes) as she waits for a biopsy report she dreads. That’s it. But what matters…

Italian horror is a strange beast. Were I really pressed on the point, I’m not sure I could name a single Italian horror picture apart from Michele Soavi’s Cemetery Man (1994) that I’d call good in any normal sense of the word — and even that film isn’t the last word in logic or coherence. It is,…

The Story: A Dachshund touches the lives of several people in a series of vignettes that only Todd Solondz could present. The Lowdown: A beautiful film (if you’re the type of person that appreciates Solondz's twisted brand of beauty), this is arguably the apogee of the filmmaker’s recent work. Hilarious and heart-wrenching in equal measure.

The Story: In post-World War II Poland, a French Red Cross nurse looks after a convent whose nuns have been sexually assaulted by Soviet soldiers. The Lowdown: A heavy, serious meditation on faith, womanhood and abuse that's not easy to watch but is worthy, thanks to its intelligence.

Perhaps the most legendary of all Orson Welles films, apart from Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil (1958) actually deserves its legend status—even if some of the legend is fabricated. (The notion put forth in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood (1994) that Universal was spuriously offering up Charlton Heston as a Mexican to Welles is nonsense, since…