Movie Reviews

In Brief: F.W. Murnau's 1926 interpretation of the classic tale of a pious alchemist who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge, youth and the love of a beautiful young woman is possibly the most accurate recounting of the story ever filmed. Murnau draws heavily from Goethe's play but also from older…

The Story: A world-renowned dressmaker enters into a contentious May-December romance with a young waitress. The Lowdown: A far more compelling film than its superficially frivolous premise might imply, Daniel Day-Lewis' swan song ranks among P. T. Anderson's best work to date.

The Story: Two young men in an activist group fall in love at the height of the AIDS epidemic. The Lowdown: A thoughtful and sensitive meditation on enduring life, love and loss in defiance of unremitting despair.

The Story: A young boy has a summer fling with an older man in the Italian countryside. The Lowdown: A premise worthy of more than a cursory eyebrow raise, executed with an emphatically eroticized male gaze that serves little purpose beyond its own sensual gratification.

The Story: Documentarian Greg Barker is given unfettered access to President Obama's inner circle during the waning days of his administration. The Lowdown: A protracted exercise in preaching to the converted.

The Story: The declassified true story of the horse soldiers sent in to take out the Taliban leadership in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, that mission turning out to be even more complicated than it first appears. The Lowdown: An OK movie that could have been great with great actors (given weak…

The Story: A shady cop must take down a team of crackpot bank robbers before they take down the Federal Reserve. The Lowdown: A mind-numbingly long, dumb and noisy heist movie with nearly nothing to recommend about itself.

The Story: Country music star Liam Page returns home to the town and the woman he left behind, only to find it's going to take a bit of work to earn back the respect and trust of those he abandoned all those years ago... The Lowdown: ... but not too much work, since every character…

In Brief: Extremely late-period Kurosawa, from a time when the lauded auteur seemed to have either given up or lost the knack entirely. While Kurosawa often delved into the melancholic, especially in his later works, Rhapsody in August (1991) digresses into the downright maudlin. While the film offers some vaguely humanist sentiment about the bombing of Nagasaki,…

In Brief: Given the awards push behind The Shape of Water, I thought it might be an opportune time to revisit the film that made Guillermo del Toro the oddest bankable director working today, Pan's Labyrinth (2006). When my illustrious predecessor reviewed this one over a decade ago, he put it pretty bluntly: "This isn't just the best…

The Story: Paddington becomes embroiled in a mysterious treasure hunt when a deluded actor steals a book the young bear cub intended to purchase as a birthday gift for his beloved aunt. The Lowdown: Atypically palatable children's fair that shows an uncommon degree of respect for its audience as well as its source material.

The Story: A man on a commuter train gets entangled in a mysterious criminal plot that he must unravel. The Lowdown: A watchable, somewhat entertaining thriller with few thrills and nothing exciting about it.

The Story: Mary, a mob assassin who takes in a young boy she made into an orphan, threatens to kick off a full-fledged street war when her motherly instincts turn deadly and she murders the boy's abusive guardian. The Lowdown: Don't lose any sleep worrying about the way things might've been.

In Brief: After my first viewing of Une Femme Mariée (1964), I recall being struck by the fact that it was not so much a strange film as it was a strange film for Godard to have made at the height of his mid-'60s prowess. It's a relatively conventional love triangle, following a repressed married woman whose dalliances with…

In Brief: An early starring turn for Judi Dench and a precursor of things to come for director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel), Mrs. Brown (1997) is a decidedly offbeat period piece exploring the platonic love affair between Queen Victoria and Scotsman John Brown (Billy Connolly). Dench is characteristically fantastic, and Connolly more than…

In Brief: Some have called Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour (1945) the ultimate example of film noir. While I wouldn’t necessarily go that far, it is unquestionably a tour de force and a nigh-unassailable classic of the genre. A Poverty Row cheapie shot in six days on a practically nonexistent budget, Detour bears all the hallmarks of…

The Story: A overview of the worldwide refugee crisis that travels the globe, attempting to show the true scope and the horror of the situation. The Lowdown: A truly exhausting and massive documentary that attempts to remind us of the human lives behind conflict and politics which, despite some flaws, succeeds.

The Story: The Washington Post's publisher must decide whether or not she will publish the Pentagon Papers at great personal and professional expense.  The Lowdown: Spoiler alert: She does.

The Story: An Olympic skier's plans for law school are derailed when she gets sucked into the lucrative world of high-stakes poker. The Lowdown: The only thing Aaron Sorkin leaves out of his directorial debut is something to be desired.

The Story: Time-hopping from the 1950s to the film's version of the present day, we witness series star Elise grow up and come to grips with her burgeoning powers while years later confronting the truth about her own past during an investigation at the house where she grew up. The Lowdown: While adding little to…

In Brief: Highly regarded, but little loved, Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring (1960) was a title the director himself seems to have had little fondness for. I tend to agree with that. The fact that it was successfully marketed on the exploitation value of its story — rape and revenge — should perhaps tell you that…