Movie Reviews

The Story: A look at a young couple's marriage as they struggle to find themselves in the wake of a tragedy. The Lowdown: A beautifully cast, literate, perceptive film that recognizes the power of suggestion and ambiguity. Definitely a must-see drama for discerning viewers.

The Story: An escaped convict terrorizes a woman home alone. The Lowdown: For such a sleazy concept, the outcome is especially tedious, something that doesn’t do much for the general dunderheaded character of the script.

In Brief: Minor Werner Herzog, but make no mistake, Where the Green Ants Dream (1984) is still Herzog, and any movie by cinema's most idiosyncratic — sometimes just short of lunatic — filmmaker is worth at least one look. It's a kind of shaggy tale of the crimes against the Aborigines by the Australian government…

In Brief: The fourth — and last really good — entry in Universal's long-running Frankenstein series is also the first one without Boris Karloff as The Monster. In his stead we have Universal's new all-purpose horror star Lon Chaney, Jr. (who would eventually have a go at nearly all of the studio's monsters). While he's…

The Story: An aging gay couple lose their apartment and are forced to live apart. The Lowdown: An absolutely beautiful, quietly intense, moving love story about love and marriage that is nothing short of a small masterpiece. John Lithgow and Alfred Molina are sublime, and so is this poignant, tender film. A pure must-see.

In Brief: Reasonably efficient — but pretty unnecessary — remake of Alfred Hitchcock's 1938 classic, the 1979 The Lady Vanishes boasts a good performance from Cybill Shepherd, some nice supporting turns and extremely good process work to give the illusion of being on a moving train. On the other hand, Elliott Gould has no business…

The Story: An over-privileged family has a bad Labor Day weekend when the whole gang gets together. The Lowdown: Tone-deaf, tin-eared drama about largely unlikable people with lots of money and a lot of self-indulgent problems.

In Brief: With apologies to Ernst Lubitsch, Rouben Mamoulian's Love Me Tonight (1932) is far and away the best of all Maurice Chevalier-Jeanette MacDonald musical comedies — and one of my top three films of all time. The combination of Mamoulian's nonstop inventiveness, a barrage of terrific Rodgers and Hart songs (four of which became…

The Story: A marine hospital struggles to find a partner for a tailless dolphin after her surrogate mother passes away. The Lowdown: Innocuous, dull familycentric drama that’s the kind of pap better suited for basic cable.

In Brief: It's the picture where Alfred Hitchcock introduced the concept of an innocent man on the run from both the police and the bad guys while trying to prove his innocence. It's also the movie with the very first of Hitchcock's ice-blonde leading ladies. And The 39 Steps (1935) can still hold its own…

The Story: Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon go on another tour of upscale restaurants — this time in Italy. The Lowdown: Similar in most respects to the original The Trip, this sequel fills all its expected requirements, but has a much more pronounced undercurrent of sadness that makes for a richer experience.

In Brief: Sometimes referred to as "the red brick Hamlet," Tony Richardson's Hamlet (1969) is unusual in that it manages to turn Shakespeare's play into a quirky personal work. It's not only radical in that Richardson cuts the play to a brisk 117 minutes, but because it's a Hamlet very much of its time, with…

The Story:  Complex crime yarn about a Chechen-owned bar used as a money drop slated to be robbed on Super Bowl night. The Lowdown: Wonderfully well-cast with a pleasingly involved story, The Drop is certainly a good film, but not the great one its writing, directing and acting pedigree suggests it could have been.

In Brief: It's a double dose of vampires (well, sort of) at the Thursday Horror Picture Show with Frank R. Strayer's The Vampire Bat (1933) and Sam Newfield's Dead Men Walk (1943). The Vampire Bat is an atmospheric cheapie that takes full advantage of its better-than-average cast and its rented Universal Pictures sets. It creaks…

In Brief: If you can overlook the feeling that the Lina Wertmüller of the 1970s would likely have sneered in contempt at her own 1992 film Ciao, Professore! it's possible to enjoy the film on its own slight terms. It's really nothing more than an Italian-flavored To Sir, with Love (1967) with third-graders rather than…

In Brief: The unexpected success of Barcelona (1994) helped secure the making of Whit Stillman's The Last Days of Disco (1998), Stillman's most expensive and elaborate film. This time his film is set in the early 1980s — right when disco is breathing its last and the club that all the characters flock to is…

The Story: A search for the philosopher's stone in the Paris catacombs turns deadly in a supernatural way. The Lowdown: Pretty bottom-of-the-barrel horror made that much worse by nausea-inducing shaky-cam and often incoherent direction.

In Brief: Having fallen on hard times since his glory days in silent cinema, E.A. Dupont found himself working with the exploitation (see the obligatory cheesecake scene) team of Jack Pollexfen and Aubrey Wisberg and turning out The Neanderthal Man (1953) — a film that might best be described as having been scraped off the…

The Story: A retired spy is pulled back into action and hunted by a former protégé. The Lowdown: A generally unlikable, convoluted, silly and worn out espionage thriller that’s needlessly overwrought and brainless.

In Brief: Released in the US (usually on the bottom of a double bill) as Every Day's a Holiday (Seaside Swingers) (1965) is the film that attempted to do for Freddie and the Dreamers what A Hard Day's Night (1964) did for The Beatles. It didn't. Not only was James Hill no Richard Lester, but…

In Brief: It's the film of the play (by John Van Druten) of the book (by Christopher Isherwood) that would eventually become Cabaret. In fact, while the story is similar, I Am a Camera just belongs to a different world than Cabaret — so much so that comparisons, while inevitable, are largely meaningless. Though usually…