Movie Reviews

The Story: The crew of the starship Enterprise find themselves stranded on a distant planet controlled by a violent maniac. The Lowdown: A glossy and occasionally fun summer action flick that suffers from a general incoherency and disposability.

The Story: The Bronx-born son of a Jewish jeweler bounces between careers and romantic entanglements in 1930s Hollywood and New York while pining after The One That Got Away . The Lowdown: More Midnight in Paris than Blue Jasmine, Cafe Society is not the Woody Allen classic it could have been. But when it works, it works.

The Story: When acorn-addled squirrel Scrat initiates a potential apocalypse, Manny the mammoth and the rest of his herd set out to save the world. The Lowdown: How much do you love your kids? It must be a lot if you're willing to sit through this dreck to please them.

The Story: A creepy terror relegated to the shadows is stalking the family of a traumatized young woman. The Lowdown: A poorly scripted, dully acted horror film full of cheap scares and zero atmosphere.

Conceptually, They Live is probably John Carpenter's best film. Unfortunately, as is often the case with Carpenter, the concept is better than the execution. Of the "modern" horrormeisters, Carpenter has always been the lightweight. The closest he got to a theme seemed to be in Halloween, with its implicit message that girls who "fooled around" get offed by…

On its initial release in 1945, New York Times critic Bosley Crowther panned Albert Lewin's adaptation of Oscar Wilde's notable novel on the grounds of the production's "mawkish pomposity" and glacial pacing. He's got a point, but things aren't as dire as he makes them sound. This Dorian Gray may not be perfect: Lewin's direction is somewhat overblown,…

This is the movie that placed Varda in the ranks of the New Wave filmmakers. Its concept is to follow the vapid title character, a pop singer, in faux real time (the title claims two hours, the film is 90 minutes) as she waits for a biopsy report she dreads. That’s it. But what matters…

Italian horror is a strange beast. Were I really pressed on the point, I’m not sure I could name a single Italian horror picture apart from Michele Soavi’s Cemetery Man (1994) that I’d call good in any normal sense of the word — and even that film isn’t the last word in logic or coherence. It is,…

The Story: A Dachshund touches the lives of several people in a series of vignettes that only Todd Solondz could present. The Lowdown: A beautiful film (if you’re the type of person that appreciates Solondz's twisted brand of beauty), this is arguably the apogee of the filmmaker’s recent work. Hilarious and heart-wrenching in equal measure.

The Story: In post-World War II Poland, a French Red Cross nurse looks after a convent whose nuns have been sexually assaulted by Soviet soldiers. The Lowdown: A heavy, serious meditation on faith, womanhood and abuse that's not easy to watch but is worthy, thanks to its intelligence.

Perhaps the most legendary of all Orson Welles films, apart from Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil (1958) actually deserves its legend status—even if some of the legend is fabricated. (The notion put forth in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood (1994) that Universal was spuriously offering up Charlton Heston as a Mexican to Welles is nonsense, since…

James Whale’s The Old Dark House (1932) is not by any means the first Old-Dark-House movie, but it’s the only one adapted from the J.B. Priestley novel by that name (though in Britain, the book was called Benighted). (We will not discuss that 1963 abomination by the same title.) The movie — believed to be…

The Story: With ghosts invading Manhattan, three scientists and a transit system worker begin hunting them down. The Lowdown: A needlessly meandering and achingly jokey reworking of a supposed classic, one that leans too heavily on in-references and wastes a likable cast.

The Story: An adaptation of the fact-based memoir of U.S. customs agent Robert Mazur, who went deep undercover to take down the Medellin Cartel by exposing Pablo Escobar’s money laundering efforts. The Lowdown: What should have been 90 minutes of pot-boiler fun turns out to be 127 minutes of pretension and tedium.

The Story: Two aging, drug-addled socialites go on the run after one of them accidentally murders Kate Moss. The Lowdown: A shrill and grating attempt at creating commentary on the rich and famous, but one with no teeth and little direction.

While it’s by no means a classic, Death Becomes Her might be more timely now than ever, considering the amount of social media scorn recently heaped upon former ingenues Meg Ryan and Renée Zellweger for their inability to remain perpetually youthful. A black comedy focused the obsessive quest to do just that, at any cost, might…

The Story: A troubled New Zealand teen — and self-proclaimed “gangsta” — is sent to live with a new adoptive family on a remote farm. But after his new “auntie” dies unexpectedly, he and his “uncle” must go on the run from the authorities to keep their family intact. The Lowdown: Wilderpeople is a coming-of-age story…

The Story: A devoted terrier named Max finds his worldview challenged when his owner adopts a new dog. The Lowdown: While it lacks the polish of Pixar, Illumination Entertainment and Universal Studios’ fifth collaboration is a predictably inoffensive crowd-pleaser. It may not end up on any best-of lists for the year, but it’s entertaining, succinct and far less…

The Story: An examination of life and art through cellist Yo-Yo Ma and his Silk Road Ensemble. The Lowdown: A good-hearted and well-meaning documentary that feels a little stiff and flimsy considering its subject matter.

The Story: Two goofy brothers with a penchant for destruction-causing high jinks are forced into finding dates to their sister's wedding, only to be fooled into taking two hard-partying friends. The Lowdown: A loud, unoriginal comedy that's a forgettable hodgepodge of equally bad movies.

The Story: When a young French girl disappears, her father and brother risk everything to find her. The Lowdown: Very loosely based on John Ford’s The Searchers, Les Cowboys explores deep and decidedly timely topics while maintaining a thematic resonance with its source material.