Movie Reviews

The Story: This year's nominees in consideration for the Best Documentary Short Academy Award.The Lowdown: An unsurprisingly depressing slate of socially conscious docs that offer at least a modicum of highly tempered optimism beneath their technical proficiency.

The Story: Caveman slobs must play a life-or-death soccer match against Bronze Age snobs to win back their homeland, the spot in (early) Manchester where the first asteroid hit and wiped out the dinosaurs.  The Lowdown: The creators of Wallace and Gromit continue their perfect track record and I only hope that this doesn't get lost in the February…

The Story: After the death of her son and husband, a woman must deal with the aftermath. The Lowdown: An occasionally arresting film with an excellent central performance from Diane Kruger that's harmed by an unfocused and ill-fitting final act.

In Brief: One of my principal complaints with François Truffaut is that he was a little too prolific for his own good. Case in point: Two English Girls (1972). Truffaut's second adaptation of a work by Jules and Jim author Henri-Pierre Roche, Two English Girls  lacks the inherent charm, narrative inventiveness and visual flair of that earlier film, favoring a muted presentation with…

In Brief: Despite the general run of critical opinion, The Monuments Men (2014) isn’t a bad movie. Had it been signed by, say, Brett Ratner or McG, it would be judged as pretty good. But it’s from George Clooney, and we expect more than “pretty good” out of Clooney (whether or not we should). We also expect…

The Story: This year's nominees in consideration for the Best Animated Short Academy Award. The Lowdown: A much stronger group of shorts in terms of technical accomplishment and narrative content than last year's batch, including one film that's very nearly perfect alongside the perfunctory Pixar picture and a five-minute Nike ad starring Kobe Bryant.

The Story: This year's collection of Academy Award nominees for Best Live-Action Short. The Lowdown: Despite the relatively maudlin tone favored by Academy voters this year, none of it is remotely as depressing as Fifty Shades Freed or any of the other dreck in theaters this week. Obviously, my advice would be to watch the shorts instead.

The Story:  Rabbits Peter, Mopsy, Flopsy, and Cotton Tail face off against their obnoxious human neighbor Mr. McGregor in a battle over who gets to rule the garden. The Lowdown: A breathless, dizzyingly joyous adventure that brings some seriously intelligent skill to these classic hare-brained characters.

The Story: The based-on-a-true-story tale of the American servicemen who stopped a terrorist attack on a French train. The Lowdown: Besides the curio of casting the actual men involved in stopping the attack, the film they're in is clumsy and often cringeworthy.

The Story: Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele get married, and we're supposed to care because ... reasons? Anyway, it doesn't go as planned. And then it does. The end! The Lowdown: Bottom-of-the-barrel quality.

In Brief: As much as I love Elevator to the Gallows, I've never been quite as enamored of Louis Malle as some others in my sphere. I remember having long arguments in the Manhattan video store where I worked after college, surreal rhetorical exercises in which I espoused a position that incest is gross even if it's French.…

In Brief: This early cult classic (maybe the first film deserving that accolade) seems a little less of a groundbreaker today, and its soft tone has caused it to be severely downgraded in many quarters, but that doesn’t keep the film from having its charms — nor does it keep modern viewers from being able…

In Brief: Gregory La Cava’s My Man Godfrey (1936) is one of the essential “screwball” comedies. It may even be the essential one. From its glossy credits (probably the most striking title design of the decade) onward, it’s a slick, rich-looking production (despite its Depression-era setting) taking place in that movie-world version of New York…

The Story: A laudanum-addicted psychologist is tasked with proving that Sarah Winchester, heir to the Winchester Repeating Rifle Co., is insane so that the board members can wrest control of the corporation from her — but he gets more than he bargained for when he discovers that her labyrinthine mansion may be as haunted as she claims. The…

In Brief: Yasujiro Ozu may be best remembered as one of the Japanese cinema's pre-eminent social realists, but his early career wasn't always so serious. Tokyo Chorus (1931) shows a lighter side of Ozu, already establishing his visual tone and narrative tendencies despite having made his directorial debut only four years prior. Clearly influenced by Ozu's self-professed…

In Brief: This understated little comedy from writer/director Bill Forsyth (Gregory's Girl, Being Human) offers slice-of-life veracity and social conscience in a slightly saccharine satire, a perfect example of what Andrew Sarris might have termed a "lightly likable" film. Late-period Burt Lancaster sets the story of an oil company trying to buy a picturesque Scottish island in motion,…

In Brief: Yes, Fritz Lang’s first sound film, M (1931), has a few awkward moments, in which Lang hasn’t quite mastered the new medium, but this old warhorse of art cinema works more than it doesn’t and still registers as a compelling work by one of the undisputed masters of film. And calling it an…

The Story: Figure skater Tonya Harding ascends to the heights of her sport as an Olympic competitor before being publicly disgraced for her participation in the 1994 attack on Nancy Kerrigan. The Lowdown: A film that teeters on the brink of tonal dissonance and smug self-satisfaction before being redeemed by exceptional performances from its central cast.

The Story: An Army Captain must brave the vicissitudes of  merciless fate as he escorts a dying Cheyenne chief back from a military prison to his ancestral homeland. The Lowdown: Bleak, brutal bloody, this revisionist Western transposes the easy answers and unimpeachable heroes characteristic of the genre with characters defined by their flaws and shaped by their suffering in a…

The Story: A scrappy group of teens immune to a global pandemic must infiltrate a walled city to rescue their friend and overthrow the shady organization seeking to exploit their blood for a cure. The Lowdown: A cacophonous conclusion to a YA franchise that drastically overstays its welcome.

In Brief: François Truffaut's sixth and final film of his Antoine Doinel series that began with Truffaut's first film, The 400 Blows, in 1959 is mostly a pure delight and a fine conclusion to the series. The only problem with Love on the Run (1979), which catches up with the 30-something Antoine for the first time…