Movie Reviews

The Story: After American expats living in India lose their son in a tragic accident, the boy’s mother seeks out supernatural aid in order to say goodbye. The Lowdown: What’s on the other side of the bore? More boredom.

The Story: A journalist, bored with her career and life, becomes a war correspondent in Afghanistan. The Lowdown: An unfocused comedy/drama that never settles on a tone, but which remains likable and watchable, thanks to a small extent to Tina Fey.

The Story: Super Secret-Service agent Mike Banning must save the president from terrorists at the funeral of the British Prime Minister. The Lowdown: A brain-dead, obnoxious, toxic lump of xenophobia, flag-waving, stock footage, crummy CGI, dismal performances and worse writing. The jackpot of bad movies.

In Brief: Dracula’s Daughter (1936) marked the end of an era: the last of the original 12 Universal horror movies that started five years earlier with Dracula (aptly enough). And it’s never really gotten its due. Sure, it’s not quite the big finish you might wish for. It’s not even the film that was originally planned (that…

In Brief: A classic example of taking a fairly simple story and bitching it up by grafting on at least two, if not three, unnecessary, unpersuasive and largely inconclusive subplots, Bottle Shock raises the question of whether or not a pretty good movie can be killed by a really bad wig. In this instance, I’m going to…

The Story: A young female rabbit police rookie has 48 hours to solve a missing persons case with the aid of a possibly untrustworthy fox.  The Lowdown: Gorgeous to look at, clever, funny and with a solid and atmospheric mystery at its core. But there's more here in the film's timely and relevant thematic content.

The Story: Past and present collide when a 27-year-old office worker goes to the country for a vacation and remembers her childhood. The Lowdown: An absolutely magnificent animated romantic drama that captures the essence of how our past informs our present. Touching, funny, realistic and quite wonderful.

In Brief: Gorgeous black-and-white cinematography marks every scene — indeed every shot — of Robert Bresson’s art-house perennial Au Hasard Balthazar (1966), a methodically paced, symbolic film that centers on the life of a donkey named Balthazar. That may not sound like the most appealing material for a feature film, but the key word is “symbolic.” This…

In Brief: Rouben Mamoulian's Queen Christina (1933) is probably the best film the legendary Greta Garbo ever made. It’s certainly in the running, and has two of the most iconic Garbo moments in her entire filmography. The film is more or less a biopic of the 17th-century queen of Sweden, but it’s not that interested in history.…

In Brief: Brian De Palma fell into the category of the unruly little brother in the 1970s trio of him, Scorsese and Coppola. He was the one who was more interested in having fun with filmmaking than he was in being controlled or making any kind of a statement. Nothing about tackling “weighty” material seems to…

In Brief: Edward Dmytryk's Murder, My Sweet (1944) isn't the first time a Raymond Chandler novel was brought to the screen. In fact, the same source novel (Farewell, My Lovely) had been reconfigured as The Falcon Takes Over two years earlier. But it did mark the first onscreen appearance of Chandler's private detective Philip Marlowe…

The Story: Outlandish rival-gods hooey. The Lowdown: It's really big — and really hokey and loud and unconvincing. The most astounding thing is how something this frantic and dumb still manages to be tedious.

In Brief: Any movie that has Marlene Dietrich clamber out of a gorilla suit, don a blonde Afro and sing “Hot Voodoo” in front of a chorus line of African warrior dancing girls is OK by me — and Josef von Sternberg’s wonderfully preposterous Blonde Venus (1932) is that movie.  It’s everything a Sternberg film should be,…

The Story: An awkward, unathletic Brit ends up an unlikely Olympic ski-jumper. The Lowdown: Simplistic and cliched like so many other uplifting sports films, but with a enough charm and a pleasantness to work as simple, feel-good entertainment.

The Story: A gang of corrupt cops and ex-military contractors beholden to a Russian mob boss are tasked with a heist that can only be accomplished by luring a rookie police officer to his death. The Lowdown: A passable potboiler, ultimately full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

In Brief: Apart from the inevitable college screening of Un Chien Andalou (1927), my first acquaintance with Luis Buñuel was made in 1982 at the 47th Street Theater in New York City with a double bill of The Phantom of Liberty (1974) and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972). I’m not sure a more complete full-immersion Buñuel experience is possible. Whether…

The Story: A geologist works against time and skeptics to save people from an impending tsunami in Norway. The Lowdown: Straightforward, solid disaster picture made a little different by its location.

The Story: A little boy leaves his home in country in search of his father. The Lowdown: Less a story than an essay on the evils of modern life — its mechanization, dehumanization, etc. — tied to its thin narrative. Some of it is decidedly impressive, and has earned the film an Oscar nomination. Undeniably…

In Brief: The tag line kind of says it all, "Rome. Before Christ. After Fellini." Fellini Satyricon (1969) is Fellini at his most unchecked and unfiltered. Calling the film disjointed is to miss the point, since it was adapted — or perhaps Fellinified — from Petronius' Satyricon, which exists only in fragments. The upshot of…

The Story: The based on a true story of Jesse Owens as he heads to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and the heart of Nazi Germany. The Lowdown: Despite the obvious importance (both historically and currently) of Owens’ story, Race is little more than a by-the-book uplifting sports film, with every cliché this entails.

In Brief: If we must have a film of Moby Dick (and it seems we must), then John Huston's 1956 film is probably the best we're going to get. It offers a reasonable approximation of the story in terms that can best be described as operatic. No, it has little subtext, but it's strong stuff…