The self-consciously “epic” epic Interstellar is wildly ambitious, massive in scope, gorgeous to look at, often clumsily sentimental, very serious, and frequently overly expository. In…
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), the latest film from Alejandro González Iñárritu, is a showy directorial performance about performance. By design, it’s swooningly…
War in cinema is often treated either as a crucible upon which manhood is tested and goodness defended (Saving Private Ryan) or as a portrait…
David Fincher’s Gone Girl immediately announces its intentions to deconstruct everyday images with a deceptive opening-credits sequence consisting of shots of empty houses, “for sale”…
In the opening of The Guest, a stranger pays a visit to a grieving family. “David” (Dan Stevens) arrives on the Petersons’ doorstep claiming to…
It’s probably (no, definitely) pushing it to suggest that Transformers: Dark of the Moon has anything in common with Terrence Malick’s also-currently-in-theaters The Tree of Life,…
But let’s not fool ourselves into believing that the original TRON was ever anything more than a curious novelty with some then-groundbreaking special effects. The story…
There’s a scene about halfway through Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s tepid The Tourist during which an Italian policeman appears to doubt Johnny Depp’s mistaken identity…
Tony Scott is frequently written off as an arty hack, the kind of filmmaker who dashes off chintzy, salacious action pictures with a dollop of…
Paying off its central gimmick, promised in the trailers, of classy, prestige picture actors like Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman and John Malkovich firing machine guns…
Six years after an extraterrestrial race landed on Earth, a photojournalist is dispatched to Mexico to escort an American heiress back to the States. After…
In 1969, Jacques Mesrine (May-reen), French arch-criminal and would-be folk hero, was on the lam from both French and Canadian authorities. He fled to the…
It’s a commonly held misconception that the exploitation cinema of the 1970s and early ’80s was “cheesy,” constituting unintentionally funny, poorly made trash notable only…
Late in Alex Gibney’s Casino Jack and the United States of Money, a damning but top-heavy indictment of clearly evil Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, we’re…
Time has had a unique effect on John McTiernan’s 1987 sci-fi action classic Predator. While its status as a genre benchmark has solidified over the…
“A crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum…
A witless, calculated attempt to start another Pirates of the Caribbean-style franchise (this one based on a video game series), Mike Newell’s Jerry Bruckheimer-produced Prince…
“This is not a shortcut to the other side,” reads a sign on the wall of an occupied Baghdad palace during a particularly dull walk-n-talk…
After a yearlong delay, a replacement director, heavy reshoots, and multiple editors, The Wolfman is probably about as good as it could possibly be. It…