Movie Reviews

In Brief: If you only see one Federico Fellini film, 8 1/2 is the one to see. It's the film where Fellini emerged as the fully-formed fantasist he's most identified as. It's a beguiling fantasy about a filmmaker trying to come to terms with his life, his spirituality, his love life and the big movie…

In Brief: Often cited (not quite correctly) as Lionel Atwill's last starring vehicle, The Mad Doctor of Market Street is one of Universal's more peculiar horror pictures. For starters, only a few minutes of the movie take place on Market Street. Instead, the next 15 or so minutes take place on a ship bound for…

In Brief: Fast-paced, funny Warner Bros.-style comedy adventure. (The style, the look and the pace are all typical of the studio in that era.) It's essentially a star comedy built around James Cagney, Ann Sheridan and Pat O'Brien in a tropical setting in South America. At bottom, it's a reshuffling of The Front Page —…

The Story: An oral history of the Israeli intelligence agency, Shin Bet, as told by the men who’ve run it. The Lowdown: An informative and occasionally eye-opening documentary that’s a bit too stodgy and erudite, but works well when it displays its humanity.

The Story: Renegade North Korean terrorists take over the White House and one Secret Service agent must save the president — and possibly the United States itself. The Lowdown: Preposterous, yet utterly predictable, nasty little jingoistic thriller with bad special effects. Loud, mean-spirited, fairly appalling Die Hard rip-off that will probably make a fortune.

The Story: A Stone Age family must learn how to adapt to a drastically changing world that threatens to become — literally — a thing of the past. The Lowdown: Spectacular-looking, exciting and (I dare say) even moving animated film with extremely good voice casting. It's nothing at all like the film the trailer suggests…

The Story: Film version of Jack Kerouac's autobiographical novel. The Lowdown: It looks good, it's solidly produced and it offers a reasonable approximation of the book, but it's never very exciting, nor does it dig very deeply.

The Story: A by-the-book Princeton admissions officer’s life is turned upside down when — among other things — she finds out a teen (who may or may not be the son she once gave up for adoption) is trying to get into her school. The Lowdown: A refreshingly mature, intelligent, good-hearted comedy that unfortunately slips…

The Story: The most recent in a series of documentaries following a group of people every seven years from the age of 7. The Lowdown: Engaging, lively and filled with life, Michael Apted's latest entry in this series of documentaries is definitely good company.

In Brief: A middle-aged businessman falls prey to the wiles of a gold-digging flapper and throws everything away in his pursuit of this transparently duplicitous woman. Something of a surprise from the last days of D.W. Griffith's career, The Battle of the Sexes manages to be sophisticated while still adhering to the director's own sensibilities.…

The Story: A pair of Vegas magicians find themselves being upstaged by a nontraditional street performer. The Lowdown: Largely painless, but utterly mediocre and unnecessary.

The Story: A 911 operator tries to help a kidnapped teen over the phone, only to learn that she’s encountered the kidnapper once before, with horrific consequences. The Lowdown: A borderline competent thriller that’s dumb as a brick — and almost entertaining because of it.

The Story: Four college girls spiral into a general haze of drugs, violence and debauchery on spring break. The Lowdown: An often grotesque, seemingly ugly descent into black light madness that tries to say much, but is betrayed by a paper thin plot and flimsy characterizations.

In Brief: Frank Capra's film of Damon Runyon's story "Madame La Gimp" is one of his most all-around pleasing films. He had not yet settled into the sentimentality that would come to be called "Capra-corn," but there's more heart here than in his earlier films. Warren William stars as a gambler who undertakes the transformation…

The Story: When her father dies in an accident, India Stoker finds her world turned upside down by the arrival of a mysterious uncle, who may be romancing her mother, or possibly her, but whose motives are as cloudy as his past. The Lowdown: Ultra stylish mystery thriller from South Korean filmmaker Chan-wook Park with…

In Brief: Double feature of the first of Lon Chaney's "Inner Sanctum" mysteries, Calling Dr. Death (1943) and Bela Lugosi's 1940s Monogram Nine series, Invisible Ghost (1941). The first finds Chaney as a neurologist (with a specialty in hypnoisis) who may or may not have murdered his faithless wife — if only he could remember.The…

In Brief: For what turned out to be his final film, Luis Buñuel turned to Pierre Louys' story The Woman and the Puppet — a work that had also served as the final film collaboration between Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich in 1935 as The Devil Is a Woman. The resulting film, That Obscure…

In Brief: Dire doings at the local mortuary where a mysterious tall man is resurrecting the dead and doing something obviously unwholesome with them. Don Coscarelli's Phantasm is at once cheesy, creepy, atmospheric and — quite possibly — the greatest drive-in movie ever made. This is exactly what is meant by the loosely-used term "cult…

In Brief Hal Ashby's timeless romance between a young man (Bud Cort) and a 79-year-old woman (Ruth Gordon) has lost none of its quirky, counterculture charm since it first appeared 42 years ago. The film, its performances and its Cat Stevens soundtrack are still as fresh today as they were in 1971.

The Story: A disfigured woman blackmails a mobster into getting revenge for her while being unaware that he’s no hardened criminal, and is secretly out for vengeance of his own. The Lowdown: An often stylish, morally complex revenge thriller that’s a bit too absurd and awkward in how it draws its characters and sets up…

In Brief: Part three of Olivier Assayas' critically-acclaimed TV mini-series (that also saw a theatrical release), Carlos, will be shown by World Cinema (this is the final installment). Covering 20 years and taking place all over the world, the story of Venezuelan terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez (aka Carlos) is an exhaustive — and occasionally exhausting…