Movie Reviews

In Brief: For a film with such a strong local connection, it's somewhat surprising that Michael Mann's The Last of the Mohicans (1992) doesn't play in town more often. Possibly not the best work of either Mann (notoriously uneven) or star Daniel Day-Lewis (consistently fantastic), Mohicans is an accessible and entertaining historical epic. Bearing more in common with the 1936…

In Brief: Director John Cromwell could aptly be called a master of melodrama, though I wouldn't necessarily consider such a distinction a compliment. A perfect case in point would be Algiers (1938), an American remake of French director Julien Duvivier's Jean Gabin vehicle Pépé Le Moko (1937). Cromwell's take is inferior in almost every way — Charles Boyer is no…

The Story: A Lebanese Christian and a Palestinian refugee butt heads over a residential plumbing code, and their ensuing court battle throws the entire country into chaos. The Lowdown: Either a disturbingly dark comedy or a painfully prescient melodrama that exposes some undeniably universal truths.

The Story: A team of female scientists explores a mysterious area of alien influence from which no prior expedition has returned. The Lowdown: Writer/director Alex Garland hits a serious sophomore slump with this Tarkovsky-lite sci-fi adaptation.

The Story: A teenager falls in love with a person who switches bodies every day and discovers just how difficult (and easy) this can be. The Lowdown: A playful (but very thoughtful) film that delves deep into the throes of first love with a decidedly queer bent that lets it stand out from the rest…

The Story: A normal, monotonous game night goes haywire when a kidnapping occurs. The Lowdown: A solid, twisty comedy that focuses on plot and character while avoiding too much raunch and childishness.

The Story: Oscar-winning actress Gloria Grahame returns to the arms of her young ex-boyfriend as she confronts her faded glory and impending mortality. The Lowdown: A showcase for actress Anette Benning that fails to do justice to both its star and its subject.

In Brief: Henri-Georges Clouzot is noted as France’s answer to Hitchcock, but the argument could be made that he was, at times, even better. Along with Wages of Fear and The Inferno, Clouzot’s mastery of morbidity is at least on par with Hitchcock’s darkest corners. Possibly the director’s best-known work, Les Diaboliques (1955) is a…

The Story: The prince of a futuristic and cloistered African city-state rises to power, but a challenger to his throne forces him to confront his nation's isolationist policies. The Lowdown: Writer/director Ryan Coogler and an absolutely exceptional cast accomplish the seemingly impossible — a superhero movie that manages to be both exhilarating and thought-provoking, one that feels like…

The Story: This year's nominees in consideration for the Best Documentary Short Academy Award.The Lowdown: An unsurprisingly depressing slate of socially conscious docs that offer at least a modicum of highly tempered optimism beneath their technical proficiency.

The Story: Caveman slobs must play a life-or-death soccer match against Bronze Age snobs to win back their homeland, the spot in (early) Manchester where the first asteroid hit and wiped out the dinosaurs.  The Lowdown: The creators of Wallace and Gromit continue their perfect track record and I only hope that this doesn't get lost in the February…

The Story: After the death of her son and husband, a woman must deal with the aftermath. The Lowdown: An occasionally arresting film with an excellent central performance from Diane Kruger that's harmed by an unfocused and ill-fitting final act.

In Brief: One of my principal complaints with François Truffaut is that he was a little too prolific for his own good. Case in point: Two English Girls (1972). Truffaut's second adaptation of a work by Jules and Jim author Henri-Pierre Roche, Two English Girls  lacks the inherent charm, narrative inventiveness and visual flair of that earlier film, favoring a muted presentation with…

In Brief: Despite the general run of critical opinion, The Monuments Men (2014) isn’t a bad movie. Had it been signed by, say, Brett Ratner or McG, it would be judged as pretty good. But it’s from George Clooney, and we expect more than “pretty good” out of Clooney (whether or not we should). We also expect…

The Story: This year's nominees in consideration for the Best Animated Short Academy Award. The Lowdown: A much stronger group of shorts in terms of technical accomplishment and narrative content than last year's batch, including one film that's very nearly perfect alongside the perfunctory Pixar picture and a five-minute Nike ad starring Kobe Bryant.

The Story: This year's collection of Academy Award nominees for Best Live-Action Short. The Lowdown: Despite the relatively maudlin tone favored by Academy voters this year, none of it is remotely as depressing as Fifty Shades Freed or any of the other dreck in theaters this week. Obviously, my advice would be to watch the shorts instead.

The Story:  Rabbits Peter, Mopsy, Flopsy, and Cotton Tail face off against their obnoxious human neighbor Mr. McGregor in a battle over who gets to rule the garden. The Lowdown: A breathless, dizzyingly joyous adventure that brings some seriously intelligent skill to these classic hare-brained characters.

The Story: The based-on-a-true-story tale of the American servicemen who stopped a terrorist attack on a French train. The Lowdown: Besides the curio of casting the actual men involved in stopping the attack, the film they're in is clumsy and often cringeworthy.

The Story: Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele get married, and we're supposed to care because ... reasons? Anyway, it doesn't go as planned. And then it does. The end! The Lowdown: Bottom-of-the-barrel quality.

In Brief: As much as I love Elevator to the Gallows, I've never been quite as enamored of Louis Malle as some others in my sphere. I remember having long arguments in the Manhattan video store where I worked after college, surreal rhetorical exercises in which I espoused a position that incest is gross even if it's French.…

In Brief: This early cult classic (maybe the first film deserving that accolade) seems a little less of a groundbreaker today, and its soft tone has caused it to be severely downgraded in many quarters, but that doesn’t keep the film from having its charms — nor does it keep modern viewers from being able…