Movie Reviews

The Story: A mother fights to protect her two young children during a home invasion. The Lowdown: Panic Room knockoff minus all the inventiveness the director of V For Vendetta should have brought to a project like this.

The Story: A mother enrolls at her daughter's college after finding out her husband wants a divorce. The Lowdown: Your mom goes to college.

In Brief: Ingmar Bergman was just 40 when he made Wild Strawberries, but he shows much of himself in the character of 78-year-old Isak Borg (Victor Sjöström). The very fact that he cast filmmaker Sjöström — a pioneer in Swedish film who had an impressive career in Hollywood silent film as Victor Seastrom — is…

In Brief: "Important" films from Martin Scorsese tend to be divisive, not only because audiences would rather see him reiterate the same gangster tropes in perpetuity  (remember when nobody showed up for his excellent Silence last year?), but also because the director himself seems to get a little lost when he starts dealing with more serious subject matter. While The Last Temptation…

In Brief: In 1957, this pair of Roger Corman cheapies played on a double bill and was advertised as a “Terrorama! Double Horror Sensation!” As with most sci-fi horror pictures of its era, the ad campaign smacks of wishful thinking. Yet there’s no denying that Not of This Earth (a premise Corman liked so much that…

The Story: An Israeli family is devastated by the news that their son has died while performing compulsory military service, only to discover that a terrible mistake has been made. The Lowdown: A brutally conceived and beautifully executed political allegory that deftly balances human tragedy with occasional touches of blackhearted farce.

The Story: An overtaxed mother receives some much-needed help from a mercurial young night nanny. The Lowdown: An interesting take on the burdens and societal pressures of motherhood that goes thoroughly off the rails in its third act.

The Story: When a burglar discovers a woman held prisoner in a house he's robbing, he goes on a mission to bring the woman's captor to justice. The Lowdown: The pretty standard and otherwise forgettable low-budget thriller has only the whacked-out performance by David Tenant going for it, but that's enough (he's worth it).

In Brief: One of only three films directed by Robin Hardy, much of what makes The Wicker Man (1973) so special can likely be attributed to recently deceased writer Anthony Shaffer, who also wrote Hitchcock's Frenzy and both the stage and screen versions of Sleuth. This film is unquestionably a definitive cult classic, due largely to…

In Brief: My entire familiarity with Patrice Chéreau prior to seeing Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train (1998) rested on seeing the video presentation of his famous (or infamous, depending on whom you ask) 1976 staging of Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle at Bayreuth. In terms of his talents as a filmmaker this told…

In Brief: The third and final of producer Hal Roach's films based on Thorne Smith's novel Topper, this hidden gem has long been overlooked due to the absence of original stars Cary Grant and Constance Bennett — and that's unfortunate because this iteration easily equals the first Topper film and blatantly bests the second. Topper Returns (1941) ditches the screwball model…

The Story: A young boy reeling from the death of his father steals a racehorse and tries to track down his aunt. The Lowdown: A coming-of-age story that eschews the feel-good sensibilities of the genre in favor of a challenging look at the bleak realities of those living on the margins of American society.

The Story: Thanos collects the Infinity Stones in order to cull the universe's population. The Lowdown: Nothing exceeds like excess ...

The Story: After the death of her boss, a personal assistant goes on the run in an attempt to solve the murder. The Lowdown: A dreadfully dull, wholly uninspiring attempt at a thriller.

In Brief: The very unusual and surprisingly powerful Oscar-nominated animated biographical film about the extraordinary — and yet perfectly relatable — life of an Iranian girl. Though playful in tone, it's a narrative that goes much deeper than one might expect. It's a film that should be seen — and one that benefits from a second…

In Brief: The Twelve Chairs — based on a 1928 Russian novel — had seen service quite a few times when Mel Brooks made his version of it in 1970, the most famous being the 1945 Fred Allen film It’s in the Bag. Oddly, the Brooks version is a lot tamer than the Fred Allen version…

In Brief: One of the most thematically unsettling and technically accomplished films of Alfred Hitchcock's British era, Secret Agent (1936) is often unduly marginalized because it followed the director's masterful The 39 Steps (1935) and preceded his equally exceptional Sabotage (also 1936). And that's unfortunate, because its twisty plot — adapted from W. Somerset Maugham's "Ashenden" stories — and compelling psychological…

The Story: An unhinged veteran working as a hitman must rescue the young daughter of a politician from a ring of upper-crust sex traffickers. The Lowdown: Writer/director Lynne Ramsay transcends the pulp predictability of her source material by eschewing gratuitous gore in favor of character development and emotional nuance.

The Story: A writer sits down to have his portrait painted, with promises that it will only take a few hours quickly broken. The Lowdown: A pleasant, small film that focuses on the creative process, but with little dramatic thrust to make it anything special.

The Story: A disgraced band of Vermont cops return to the job in a small Canadian village recently repatriated to the US. The Lowdown: Neither as bad nor as good as it might have been, this trip down memory lane narrowly avoids hitting a complete dead end.

The Story: A widowed mother and her two adult sons struggle to cope with the passing of their patriarch. The Lowdown: A purposeless meditation on grief that is elevated by solid performances but dragged down by its own sense of privilege and self-importance.