Movie Reviews

Starring: Jack Black, Cate Blanchett, Owen Vaccaro, Sunny Suljic, Kyle MacLachlan

The House with a Clock in Its Walls

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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.
Starring: Chloe Sevigny, Kristen Stewart, Jeff Perry, Fiona Shaw, Jamey Sheridan, Kim Dickens, Denis O'Hare

Lizzie

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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.
Starring: Evan Rosado, Sheila Vand, Raúl Castillo, Josiah Gabriel, Isaiah Kristian

We the Animals

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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.
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough, Linus Roache, Olwen Fouéré, Richard Brake, Bill Duke

Mandy

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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.
Starring: Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively, Henry Golding, Andrew Rannells, Linda Cardellini, Jean Smart, Rupert Friend

A Simple Favor

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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…
Starring: Boyd Holbrook, Trevante Rhodes, Jacob Tremblay, Keegan-Michael Key, Olivia Munn, Alfie Allen, Thomas Jane

The Predator

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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.
Starring: Glenn Close, Jonathan Pryce, Christian Slater

The Wife

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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.
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Richie Merritt, Bel Powley, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Brian Tyree Henry, RJ Cyler, Eddie Marsan, Bruce Dern, Piper Laurie

White Boy Rick

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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.
Starring: Douglas Booth, Jerome Flynn, Robert Gulaczyk, Helen McCrory, Chris O’Dowd, Saoirse Ronan

Loving Vincent

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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…
Starring: Plácido Domingo, Katia Ricciarelli, Justino Díaz, Petra Malakova, Urbano Barberini

Otello

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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…
Starring: Danny Robertshaw, Ron Danta

Life in the Doghouse

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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…
Starring: Taissa Farmiga, Demian Bichir, Jonas Bloquet, Bonnie Aarons, Charlotte Hope

The Nun

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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…
Starring: Jennifer Garner, John Gallagher Jr., Juan Pablo Raba, John Ortiz

Peppermint

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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.
Starring: Domhnall Gleeson, Ruth Wilson, Will Poulter, Liv Hill, Charlotte Rampling

The Little Stranger

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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.
Starring: Emily Mortimer, Bill Nighy, Patricia Clarkson, Honor Kneafsey, James Lance

The Bookshop

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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.
Starring: Soran Ebrahim, Avaz Latif, Saddam Hossein Feysal, Hiresh Feysal Rahman

Turtles Can Fly

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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…
Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Jason Flemyng, Grera Scacchi, Colm Feore, Jean-Luc Bideau

The Red Violin

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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…
Starring: John Cho, Debra Messing, Michelle La

Searching

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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…
Starring: Oscar Isaac, Ben Kingsley, Mélanie Laurent, Haley Lu Richardson, Joe Alwyn, Nick Kroll, Greta Scacchi

Operation Finale

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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.
Starring: Rose Byrne, Ethan Hawke, Chris O'Dowd, Azhy Robertson

Juliet, Naked

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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.