Movie Reviews

The Story: A game of truth or dare takes a dark turn when a group of college friends realizes the game has overtaken their lives and will eventually kill them all. The Lowdown: Lucky them.

In Brief: François Truffaut’s Day for Night (1973) is not only a great movie about movies, but it’s fascinating as an example of how international cinema truly is. By this I mean that while we think of foreign film as a separate world, Day for Night is clearly the kind of movie that could only have…

In Brief: Fie on those who have trashed this entertainingly overheated historical conceit! Yes, it’s completely indefensible as history. So what else is new? Anyone going to a movie like this expecting historical accuracy is in the same unseaworthy vessel as the student who watches James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) and uses it to turn in a…

The Story: A young boy in the not-too-distant future goes on a perilous quest to rescue his dog, who is exiled to Trash Island by a corrupt government regime that prefers cats. The Lowdown: The stop-motion animated Kurosawa homage/political allegory you didn't know you needed in your life.

The Story: A small family struggles to survive the threat of mysterious creatures that stalk humans by sound. The Lowdown: A generally effective low-budget thriller that overplays an ambitious conceit, yet still works more often than it doesn't.

The Story: An elderly couple take the family RV on one last road trip from Massachusetts to the Hemingway house in Key West. The Lowdown: Aside from predictably masterful performances from Donald Sutherland and Helen Mirren, you'll forget this one faster than Sutherland's character forgets his wife's name.

The Story: Three parents discover their teenage daughters plan to lose their virginity on prom night and decide to stop them. The Lowdown: While not as puritanical as its premise might sound, any sense of progressiveness is lost in various gross-out gags, and there's nothing truly novel about the whole thing.

The Story: The 1969 drowning of Mary Jo Kopechne off Chappaquiddick Island and the subsequent media frenzy surrounding why Sen. Edward Kennedy fled the scene of the accident. The Lowdown: Send Teddy off to do this, send Teddy off to do that, let Teddy take care of some Mickey Mouse nightclub somewhere, send Teddy to…

In Brief: The late, great Ken Hanke and I had numerous lengthy and heated debates about the relative merits — or lack thereof, in his opinion — of cult horror parody Student Bodies (1981). This broad farce was the first to lampoon the inherent absurdity of the slasher subgenre when it was still in its infancy, decades before Scream (1996)…

In Brief: Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark accomplishes the not inconsiderable feat of being both fascinating and tedious at the same time. Conceptually, the film is brilliant. Technically, it’s a marvel. Dramatically, it’s about as much fun as an evening with an insurance salesman. That said, Russian Ark boasts enough striking imagery — some of it positively haunting…

In Brief: A diminished budget — and other things — conspire against this attempt at a big-screen Miss Marple movie to accompany successful Hercule Poirot films. It’s not actually bad, it’s just not all that hot. The magnificently catty duels of the divas — Liz Taylor and Kim Novak — are certainly fun, but the…

In Brief: Fresh from his stint in the German film industry, Alfred Hitchcock gave the British movie world a well-needed shot in the arm with The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) starring the immensely popular Ivor Novello. In so doing, he also gave the world its very first movie that feels like…

The Story: A man with autism comes out of his shell when he falls in love with a young woman in his autism support group, but their romance is as conflicted and challenging as any other. The Lowdown: A touching and compelling love story rendered all the more laudable for its treatment of adults with autism as human beings…

The Story: A boy living in a dystopian future must win a virtual reality video game to save his escapist nostalgia pit from an evil organization that wants to put ads in it. The Lowdown: 140 minutes of computer-animated pop culture name-dropping masquerading as a movie.

The Story: A sexually precocious teen turns tricks to bail her deadbeat dad out of jail and then murders someone before falling in love with her stepbrother. The Lowdown: A rose by any other name would be more entertaining. Literally, looking at a rose for two hours would be better than watching this film.

The Story: Thinking her husband has betrayed her, a woman puts an elaborate plan for revenge into motion. The Lowdown: A movie that gaslights its own characters at the expense of tricking its audience.

The Story: After his church is burned down, a reverend must go to court to secure its remaining on a hostile college campus. The Lowdown: While a bit more measured and professional-looking than previous installments, this third time around is still incredibly inert and dull.

In Brief: While this surreal — and sexually charged — drama is certainly nowhere near the most unsettling thing Pier Paolo Pasolini ever made (that would be 1975's Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom), Teorema is high on the Not for Everyone list. It's less that the film is upsetting (though some will find…

In Brief: While it may not be the best film he ever made, Ernst Lubitsch's The Shop Around the Corner (1940) is a prime example of the "Lubitsch Touch." A light, occasionally frivolous romantic comedy that gave James Stewart one of his most iconic early roles, Lubitsch's sense of story and characterization are second to none even if…

In Brief: It wasn't that long ago that Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin — then known mostly as Potemkin — was in the top five of nearly all lists of the greatest films ever made. While the 1925 Soviet film seems to have been downgraded in recent years, it remains an essential of cinematic literacy, one of…

The Story: Artist Andy Goldsworthy creates breathtaking art installations from natural materials. The Lowdown: A beautifully meditative look at a captivating artist that examines how time has changed both the man and his work.