Movie Reviews

In Brief: "It" was a term coined by racy (for the time) novelist Elinor Glyn. Though meaning somewhat more, "It" was essentially interchangeable with sex appeal. That's certainly how it was mostly used — and it was used a lot in its day (when the word "sex" was considered impolite), though the abbreviation "S.A." would…

In Brief: The Seventh Seal is probably the single biggest old warhorse of art-house cinema. But there’s a reason it achieved that status: It’s so damned good. When it first appeared in 1957, it was not at all like anything else that had come before it. It wasn’t even like Bergman. Oh, sure, there had been…

The Story: A poet-philosopher under house arrest is being deported to his homeland, but stops along the way to dispense advice and blessings — much to the displeasure of the authorities. The Lowdown: A clearly well-intentioned attempt at translating Gibran's book to film that may play well enough to adherents, but may be a puzzling…

In Brief: High on the list of underrated — perhaps even misunderstood — Roman Polanski films is his 1999 diabolical thriller, The Ninth Gate. When it appeared 16 years ago, most critics seemed to want to dismiss the film out of hand with the typical (and wrongheaded) outcry of it being inferior to his Rosemary’s Baby (1968). In…

The Story: Fact-based story covering the five days David Lipsky spent with author David Foster Wallace at the end of his 1996 tour for Infinite Jest.  The Lowdown: Not really a biopic, but more a compelling — and surprisingly entertaining — slice of time spent with a famous writer, and the tensions and evasions and…

The Story: Four mild-mannered youngsters gain superpowers after a science experiment gone wrong. The Lowdown: A disjointed, joyless addition to the saturated world of comic book movies.

The Story: Two kids make off with a seemingly abandoned police car that happens to belong to a corrupt sheriff, who was off disposing of a body. The Lowdown: Spare, unadorned and unsentimental crime thriller. Well done modern B-picture stuff that may be too cold-blooded for some viewers.

In Brief: If you only see one Federico Fellini film, 8 1/2 is the one to see. It's the film where Fellini emerged as the fully-formed fantasist he's most identified as. It's a beguiling fantasy about a filmmaker trying to come to terms with his life, his spirituality, his love life and the big movie already in…

In Brief: Rex Ingram’s The Magician (1926) takes place of pride as being the first American horror film that doesn’t feel the need to offer up a rational explanation for its supernatural content. It also happens to be one of Ingram’s best films — and the film that had perhaps more direct influence on the Universal horror…

In Brief: Whatever else can be said about the 1940s, it was not an era that produced much that could truly be described as "off-the-wall." Bing and Bob in their various "Road" pictures was about as wild as it got. One of the few exceptions to this rule is It's in the Bag! — the only starring…

The Story:  A couple's life is thrown into increasing disarray and dread by the arrival of someone from the husband's increasingly murky past. The Lowdown: A well-judged, slickly-made thriller that mostly eschews the trappings of the genre for more psychological unease and a disturbingly dark vision of the world.

The Story: Facing a family crisis, an aging low-rent "rock star" returns to the family she abandoned years earlier. The Lowdown: Though it seems to strike a chord as "Boomer-bait" and capitalizes on Meryl Streep's name, this is a flat-footed comedy-drama with music — but the comedy is almost nonexistent, the drama heavy-handed and the…

The Story: Shaun the Sheep leads the flock on an adventure in the city that turns out to be more than he bargained for. The Lowdown: Moderately successful attempt to capture the spirit of silent movie comedy with claymation sheep. More clever than outright funny, but invariably pleasant — and ought to appeal to younger…

In Brief: It's too big, too loud, too over-produced. Hey, Barry Levinson made it, Chris Columbus wrote it and Spielberg produced it. What did you expect? Young Sherlock Holmes was largely dismissed in 1985, and, of course, riled up a few Sherlockians (the literary equivalent of comic book fanboys). However, the latter have turned their…

In Brief: If you’ve never seen a Luis Buñuel film, it’s high time you did, and this 1972 Oscar winner about six middle-class people and their interrupted efforts to have a meal together is a good place to start. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is more accessible than some of Buñuel’s work and might just…

The Story: The sole survivor of a mass murder 25 years ago is forced by circumstances to confront the truth of what happened. The Lowdown: It may be little more than a convoluted — and fairly unpleasant — mystery thriller, but it's largely effective and holds the interest.

In Brief: An early Dario Argento film (his second), The Cat o' Nine Tails (1971) is more mystery than outright horror — and its PG (originally GP) rating should clue you in on the fact that it doesn't really qualify as a giallo. In fact, it's closer to a German krimi than anything. But that…

In Brief: Back before our current "information overload" era — which is to say 2005 — it was quite possible to walk into an awards-season critics' screening and encounter a movie you'd never heard of and knew nothing about. Such a film was Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto — which I didn't even know was…

The Story: A burned-out philosophy professor gets a new lease on life when he decides to commit the "perfect murder" as a kind of twisted good deed. The Lowdown: Though it just misses being one of Woody Allen's great films, this is still a worthwhile addition to his filmography and a must-see for admirers of…

The Story: A de facto sequel/reboot to 1983’s Vacation, one that finds a father on a similar roadtrip with his family — and one with equally disastrous results. The Lowdown: Despite the over-reliance on body humor and general crassness running through the entirety of the film, the end result is a generally harmless (though wholly…

In Brief: First of all, it's too long. Second, Auntie Mame is adapted from a play and it marked the film debut of theater director Morton DaCosta — both of which conspire to make it feel like canned theater. (The fact that it was made in the 1950s and in Cinemascope — or Technirama, which is the…