Movie Reviews

In Brief: Costa-Gavras’ Z (1969) was undoubtedly the first overtly political film I ever saw, and I’m sure that at the age of 15, I actually understood very little of it. What I did understand and respond to was the film’s in-your-face attitude — daring to announce its leftist political agenda with a special credit, “Any similarity…

In Brief: Director Michael Curtiz has 178 titles to his credit (according to IMDb), so he can be forgiven if some of them are less impressive than others. While 1961's Francis of Assisi certainly falls into the category of lesser Curtiz, it's not exactly bad so much as it is uninspired. This biopic covering the life of Francis…

The Story: Based on the true story of Lee Israel, a washed-up boozehound of an author in 1980s New York who turned to forging letters from literary notables when her latest book failed to attract a publisher. The Lowdown: For a story all about lies, this is a film with an exceptional degree of emotional honesty.

The Story: Trapped behind enemy lines hours before the D-Day invasion, a small unit of American soldiers tasked with a dangerous mission stumbles onto a nefarious Nazi plot in a small French village. The Lowdown: Old-school horror that makes the most of its minuscule budget.

The Story: A father struggles with his son's unexpected addiction to drugs and a seemingly impossible recovery. The Lowdown: While there are some interesting stylistic flourishes here, a lack of an emotional linchpin, uneventful performances and a narrow view of addiction keep the movie from being something more impressive.

The Story: The Grinch who stole Christmas is back on the scene, prowling and scowling on big silver screens. The Lowdown: While it's beautiful, bouncy and bright, the book or the short are your best bets tonight.

The Story: Hacker Lisbeth Salander is drawn into a convoluted plot to recover a computer program designed to hijack nuclear missiles around the world so that her estranged sister can claim some amorphous revenge. The Lowdown: A regrettably rushed reboot of Stieg Larsson's "Millennium" stories that fails to do justice to its iconic protagonist and doesn't live up…

In Brief: It's no surprise that Korean director Chan-wook Park's 2003 masterpiece Oldboy took home the Grand Prix from Cannes in 2004. What is somewhat surprising is just how well it has held up in the intervening decade and a half. For an unflinchingly brutal film rife with excessive violence, Oldboy has been an incredibly influential film and one with a…

In Brief: Definitely not the best Michael Curtiz movie, but potentially one of the best Joan Crawford vehicles, Mildred Pierce (1945) skirts the line between soap-opera melodrama and hard-boiled film noir without coming down definitively on either side. Its plot, based on a James M. Cain novel of the same name, often strains credulity even as it…

The Story: A young girl travels to a whimsical fantasy world in an attempt to solve a puzzle left behind for her by her late mother. The Lowdown: A pleasant, well-meaning family film that hits all the right notes for this type of film, yet never quite raises itself toward anything greater.

The Lowdown: Stadium-rock superstars Queen rise from obscurity to global dominance before lead singer Freddie Mercury's tragic demise from AIDS. The Lowdown: Another Bryan Singer film bites the dust.

The Story: When her sister Danica is catfished, newly released ex-con Tanya goes to great lengths to help her solve the mystery. The Lowdown: An extremely raunchy, emotionally dead and typically tone-deaf Tyler Perry comedy.

The Story: A young American enrolls at a prestigious German dance academy, only to find herself ensnared in a murderous conspiracy carried out by a coven of witches. The Lowdown: With this turgid attempt to reboot Dario Argento's vaunted Three Mothers trilogy, director Luca Gudagnino has delivered nothing more than a cinematic stillbirth.

In Brief: Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies is the most intense film I’ve seen all year. It’s also one of the most compelling — and, in its own way, one of the most entertaining. The brilliance of Incendies lies in its fragmented presentation of the story as a mystery. This provides the film with that rarest of qualities —…

In Brief: Possibly the most beloved of all movies, Michael Curtiz's Casablanca (1942) is a combination of happy accidents, studio professionalism and plain dumb luck that came together to create the most perfect of all Hollywood studio movies, a perfect blend of studio system efficiency that still allowed for personal creativity. It has more quotable…

The Story: A young boy comes of age in the ’90s California skateboarding scene. The Lowdown: A solid feature debut for Jonah Hill as writer/director, if one that will predominantly appeal to a very specific demographic and falls short of greatness in the end.

The Story: A diverse group of international high school students vies for recognition and academic opportunity at the world's most prestigious science fair. The Lowdown: A lightly likable doc that shines an overdue light on on the pursuits of some very, very smart kids.

The Lowdown: The captain of a U.S. submarine must prevent World War III when Russian political intrigue threatens to trigger a large-scale nuclear conflict. The Lowdown: They should've let this one sink with all hands.

In Brief: What a relief — and what a delight — it is to be able to praise a horror film without a string of qualifiers and excuses! Sure, there’ve been a handful of horror pictures in the past few years that deserved a look, but all required caveats about how this or that or the…

In Brief: Michael Curtiz returned to the horror genre with Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), which was only natural since the previous year's Doctor X  had been the film that had put the horror genre on the map at Warner Bros. Again, Curtiz was working in two-strip Technicolor, with the same stars — Lionel…

The Story: After 40 years of training and preparation, Laurie Strode finally gets the chance to confront mass murderer Michael Meyers once and for all. The Lowdown: The first entry in the franchise that comes anywhere close to measuring up to the original. David Gordon Green has delivered a sequel with enough tricks to be a real treat.