Movie Reviews

The Story: A young orphan comes to live with his uncle, a warlock in the midst of a supernatural struggle to save the world. The Lowdown: Horror director Eli Roth makes a marginally convincing transition into PG territory with this fantasy adventure flick that almost works.

The Story: In the weeks leading up to her parents' gruesome murders, Lizzie Borden and her young housemaid struggle under the yoke of male oppression. The Lowdown: A potentially riveting reimagining of the Borden slayings that falls short in execution despite a solid central cast and compelling perspective.

The Story: A young boy navigates his rocky home life and burgeoning sexuality. The Lowdown: A beautiful and heartfelt film about family and growing up and all the confusion that brings.

The Story: After a cult leader murders his wife, a logger takes brutal and bloody revenge. The Lowdown: Oh Mandy — well you came and you gave psycho Cagey — and I need you today, oh Mandy.

The Story: An overachieving single mom befriends the sophisticated mother of one of her son's classmates, but when her new bff goes missing a sinister plot emerges. The Lowdown: A pulpy neo-noir with a heavy dose of satire and a ridiculously serpentine plot that deftly balances its trash thriller themes and comedic sensibilities, thanks in no small part…

The Story: A group of dysfunctional veterans must battle extra terrestrial big game hunters to retain possession of alien weaponry taken from a downed spacecraft that holds a secret of its own. The Lowdown: Director Shane Black and co-writer Fred Dekker reunite for a predictably flawed but satisfyingly splatter-adled sequel.

The Story: The secret history between a novelist and his wife is revealed after he wins the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Lowdown: A good story, interesting characters, and a great cast can't quite make up for the leaden and obvious filmmaking.

The Story: The misguided teen son of an affable gun dealer in 1980s Detroit finds himself entangled in an FBI scheme to take down large-scale players in the crack cocaine trade. The Lowdown: What should have been an entertainingly grimy adaptation of a true story becomes an overwrought melodrama dragged down by its award bait ambitions.

The Story: A documentary about Scotty Bower, a procurer of sexual partners in postwar Hollywood. The Lowdown: A disjointed doc that wants to follow its oddball subject while also forcing an undeserved amount of profundity on top of the whole film.

In Brief: Classic World Cinema is revisiting one of the most visually engaging films of 2017, Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman's incomparably ambitious Loving Vincent. In my review from last October, I expounded further: "The very fact that a film like Loving Vincent exists is a noteworthy achievement in and of itself. Composed entirely of oil paintings in the…

In Brief: In 1986, in one of their rare attacks of culture, the amazing team of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus opted to produce and release (through their Canon Films company) Franco Zeffirelli’s film version of Gisuseppe Verdi’s opera Otello, which, of course, is based on Shakespeare’s play. Well, you don’t get much more cultured than…

The Story: A documentary profile of Danny and Ron's Rescue, a nonprofit dog shelter housed in a couple's South Carolina home. The Lowdown: A touching — and at times, disturbing — look at the world of animal rescue as seen through the eyes of two men who have dedicated their lives (and retirement funds) to helping dogs in…

The Story: A priest and a young nun are sent by the Vatican to determine if a Romanian convent is still consecrated ground following the suicide of one of the sisters, only to uncover a much greater evil than a lack of mental health resources. The Lowdown: An odd mashup of Hammer-style high camp and modern jump scare…

The Story: Jennifer Garner goes full Death Wish after seeing her husband and child gunned down by gangsters. The Lowdown: A cool, violent, entertaining-as-hell 75-minute movie with an extra 30 minutes tacked onto the end of it.

The Story: A country doctor in the postwar English countryside encounters mysterious events at the crumbling manor home of a dwindling family of aristocrats. The Lowdown: A reasonably creepy and atmospheric piece of supernatural (or is it psychological?) suspense cinema that suffers in comparison to its director's previous films.

The Story: A woman in a small town decides to open a bookshop despite pushback from more powerful people in her community. The Lowdown: An incredibly drawn-out and confoundingly pointless drama that really only has a nice Bill Nighy performance going for it.

In Brief:  When first shown here (2004), I wrote: "The first thing you notice about Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi’s Turtles Can Fly is how much more technically accomplished it is than most films we see from this part of the world. The colors are bright and vivid, the images are sharp and detailed, the compositions…

In Brief: The so-called portmanteau film — a collection of stories in a single vessel — is by its very nature a tricky proposition. Even the best of them — Julien Duvivier’s Tales of Manhattan (1942), the multidirector Dead of Night (1945) — rises and falls on the quality of the individual episodes. Duvivier’s film, for…

The Story: A widower searches for his missing daughter by delving into her digital life to retrace her steps before she disappeared. The Lowdown: Yet another entry in the "takes place entirely on a computer screen" genre, somewhat slight in the character and story departments and hamstrung by its gimmick but more suspenseful and affective than one…

The Story: Historic drama recounting the 1960 Mossad operation to capture former SS officer Adolph Eichmann, who had been living under an assumed identity in Argentina. The Lowdown: A disappointing dramatization of a fascinating subject that benefits from the strong performances of Ben Kingsley and Oscar Isaac, but ultimately fails to settle on a cohesive narrative strategy.

The Story: After breaking up with her boyfriend, a woman enters a relationship with her ex's favorite (yet reclusive) musician. The Lowdown: Despite touches of intelligence and commentary on art and artists, the rest of the movie is awash in romantic comedy semantics that are light on the romance and uneven on the comedy.