Movie Reviews

The Story: A biographical dramatization of the tragic life and untimely death of influential country singer-songwriter Blaze Foley. The Lowdown: A touching and evocative portrait of a troubled genius dragged down by inner demons in a classic case of life imitating art.

The Story: A young yeti begins to question everything he's believed in when he meets a seemingly mythical human being. The Lowdown: A pleasant and frantic animated movie with a worthy message, but nothing really inspiring to set it apart.

The Story: A dyslexic high-school dropout must attend night school and get his GED to land his dream job and win back the love of his life. The Lowdown: Try as he might, director Malcolm D. Lee can't recapture the near-transcendent raunchiness of his hard R-rated Girl Trip within the softer, cuddlier PG-13 formula.

The Story: A judge must weigh her legal obligations against her emotions when she decides the case of a young Jehovah's Witness refusing medical treatment for his leukemia. The Lowdown: A bloated melodrama with no clear objective and a murky moral sensibility.

The Story: Six hormone-addled college students must evade a masked killer in a horror-themed amusement park. The Lowdown: What the actual hell.

In Brief: When this ran in 2007, I wrote: “The four-star rating I’ve afforded Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura (1960) is born of a desire to approach the film as objectively as possible. Objectively, this is an important film — maybe even close to a great film. The rich, detailed, deep-focus black-and-white images that make up the…

The Story: A biograpic documenting the life of comedian and cancer crusader Gilda Radner. The Lowdown: A lightweight but professional doc that provides little in the way of new insight but plenty of personality thanks to its scintillating subject.

The Story: When an entire town's text and browsing history is hacked and leaked, the girl suspected to be behind it all is targeted. The Lowdown: An ultra-violent ode to rape culture masquerading as a feminist manifesto.

In Brief: This is the odd-film-out in the major works of Michael Powell and Emerich Pressburger — rarely spoken of in the same breath with their standard classics, The Life and Death of Col. Blimp, Stairway to Heaven, Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes, yet clearly part of the same creative impetus behind those films. It’s a…

This is one of those movies I’m supposed to like a lot more than I do. But the fact is that I’m pretty indifferent to this as filmmaking, despite the quality of its screenplay and acting. That isn’t to say it’s a bad movie — just one that, for me, misses greatness. Many people feel…

The Story: A sprawling, time-hopping metanarrative on the subjects of love and loss. The Lowdown: Yet another insipid and cringe-worthy melodrama taking the "it's all connected" route while landing the biggest dissociative emotional belly flop of the year.

The Story: An odd assessment of Donald Trump's presidency from one of the cinema's most provocative voices. The Lowdown: A disappointingly disorganized political analysis from "documentarian" Michael Moore that misses its chance to say anything new or to say anything well.

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.