Movie Reviews

The Story: After his girlfriend is killed in a terrorist attack, a young man joins a CIA black ops mission to take revenge on the organization responsible. The Lowdown: Brainless, heartless, and all around miserable, this is typical back-to-school studio dumping-ground fare.

In Brief: Alejandro González Iñárritu and his writing partner Guillermo Arriaga made their bid to move into the mainstream with Babel (2006), a film that was nothing if not ambitious. Taking their standard approach of multiple stories that ultimately connect to create a larger picture, they moved a step further by making the stories global…

In Brief: Louis Leterrier's 2013 Now You See Me basically has all of the elements that I hate in a film — it's an exercise in style over substance with effectively no attention payed to character or story, the cinematic equivalent of a cheap off-Strip Vegas floorshow. Which is why I'm surprised that I don't hate it, at least…

The Story: After his father ends up on his deathbed, a son travels to a small town to look after him and ends up in a friendship with a young woman. The Lowdown: A surprising little movie, gorgeously shot and intricate, with a wonderfully genuine humanity to it.

The Story: A recently widowed father must prove to his orthodox Jewish community that he is fit to retain custody of his son. The Lowdown: A touching, thoughtful and frequently tragic story that transcends its religious trappings to become something universally relatable.

The Story: A graveyard shift midwife at a failing Paris clinic meets a woman from her past, throwing her life into turmoil while trying to hold it all together for everyone around her. The Lowdown: Provost delivers Ozu by way of Chantal Akerman in this razor-sharp portrait of troubled, dreary, ordinary lives.

The Story: A group of young misfits in small-town Maine must confront an ancient evil that feeds on fear. The Lowdown: A competently executed adaptation of Stephen King's classic novel that proves sufficiently scary to justify its existence, if not the excitement surrounding its release.

The Story: Two friends travel through Spain eating at fine restaurants and dealing with the intimate problems of their lives. The Lowdown: A classic case of diminished returns from a film franchise that was already a bit flimsy. Unfortunately, more of the same with only a good cast and an interesting ending going for it.

The Story: On her 40th birthday, Alice meets and falls for a younger man who moves into her guest house while he pitches his script around LA.  The Lowdown: "Written and directed by Nancy Meyers' kid" are now the seven dirtiest words in show business.

In Brief: If you could disregard the fact that Miracles For Sale (1939) is the last film of the great Tod Browning, it would a perfectly acceptable — if largely undistinguished — potboiler of a murder mystery. The fact that this film is the swan song of one of the greatest horror directors of the early cinema, however,…

In Brief: Ingmar Bergman was just 40 when he made Wild Strawberries, but he shows much of himself in the character of 78-year-old Isak Borg (Victor Sjöström). The very fact that he cast filmmaker Sjöström — a pioneer in Swedish film who had an impressive career in Hollywood silent film as Victor Seastrom — is telling,…

In Brief: Orson Welles' most financially successful (and therefore least admired) film, The Stranger is a fairly straightforward suspense thriller — but it's a suspense thriller that only Welles could make. Its hero is a Nazi hunter (Edward G. Robinson) who's obsessed to the point of being a little unbalanced. Its villain is an unregenerate…

The Story: Alejandro Jodorowsky continues his surrealist autobiographical fantasy by recounting his late adolescence and early adulthood in Chile, a period in which he devoted his life to becoming an artist. The Lowdown: A profoundly affecting examination of family and artistry from one of the great masters of modern cinema.

The Story: The civilian journalists of Raqqa is Being Silently Slaughtered risk their lives to expose the grotesque violence being perpetrated against the Syrian populace at the hands of ISIS. The Lowdown: An oppressively bleak but undeniably powerful portrait of the men struggling valiantly to undermine ISIS' stranglehold on the Middle East.

The Story: A young orphan is married off to a wealthy businessman in 17th-century Amsterdam, but her life is complicated by an inability to conceive and a torrid affair with a painter.  The Lowdown: Not even the profusion of attractive naked people on screen can justify the existence of something this irredeemably dumb.

The Story: Three couples participate in a documentary with the premise that marriage is no longer a workable system, each coming to terms with the problems in their relationships. The Lowdown: A new low for lazy romantic comedy cliches, this one is best avoided and forgotten.

In Brief: If you’ve never seen His Girl Friday (1940), this is definitely one of the greats from the “golden age” of movies — and it’s a film that still holds the record for the fastest dialogue in the history of movies. That crackling, witty banter is delivered by people who know exactly how to do…

In Brief: Writer/director Louis Malle is perhaps best known for his strangely experimental My Dinner with Andre — and that's a shame, because he was a tremendously talented narrative filmmaker who didn't need gimmicks to make a great movie, even if that's all the casual moviegoing populace remembers about him. Potentially his most personal film, Malle's Au Revoir…

In Brief: Late-period Truffaut is decidedly hit-or-miss, and The Last Metro (1980) sits squarely on the fence in my estimation. This story of a theater troupe in Nazi-occupied France is unobjectionable enough, but that may be part of its problem — there's nothing to object to, but there's also nothing to truly applaud either. The cast is uniformly great,…

The Story: A mentally unhinged young woman pursues an ill-advised friendship with an Instagram celebrity. The Lowdown: Instead of going West to grow up with the country, Ingrid goes West to grow insane with the internet.

The Story: A down-on-her-luck bartender in a run-down New Jersey town dreams of becoming a hip-hop star. The Lowdown: A sometimes interesting film about misfits and underdogs that never quite transcends its melodramatic leanings and any real emotional resonance.