Category: Actor

  • Night Nurse (1931)

    Pulpy, violent and sexy (not necessarily in that order), Night Nurse presents a world seedy enough to make most noirs look like Disneyland by comparison. This Pre-Code gem is short, fast and slam-bang entertainment. Barbara Stanwyck stars as Lora Hart, a dedicated young nurse who lands work in a city hospital. There’s not much else…

  • Akeelah and the Bee (2006)

    Eleven-year-old Akeelah Anderson wants to be like other girls, but blending into anonymity isn’t easy when you’re brilliant. She shrinks when she makes perfect grades and is mortified when labeled a “brainiac.” Despite all her efforts, Akeelah is unable to fit in. The girl can’t help it; she’s smart. Her chief talent is a gift…

  • 2 Days in the Valley (1996)

    Too many moviegoers and critics initially dismissed 2 Days in the Valley as a Pulp Fiction knockoff, and today the movie might best be remembered for Charlize Theron in her big-screen debut as a statuesque gun moll. But this flick deserves better. Writer-director John Herzfeld‘s modest comic thriller bears a passing resemblance to Pulp Fiction,…

  • Eastern Promises (2007)

    Throughout most of his career, David Cronenberg twisted moviegoers into knots by exploring their fears of losing control, particularly when it came to one’s body. Such shenanigans spawned masterpieces of the macabre, from the exploding heads of Scanners to an even-creepier-than-usual Jeff Goldblum in The Fly, but too often, Cronenberg’s thematic obsessions overwhelmed his storytelling.…

  • Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)

    Breaking up is hard to do, as an old song once cautioned us, but that’s hardly a newsflash for anyone who has endured the agony of being dumped. Untold millions of books, movies and songs have commemorated the hell of being kicked to the proverbial curb and the subsequent tears, depression, drinking, vomiting, rebound, stalking…

  • Chloe (2009)

    Chloe wants to be an erotic thriller. At least, that’s what I think it aims to be. It’s difficult to know for sure, what with its eroticism steeped in so much fussy pretensions. The movie is particularly disappointing coming from Atom Egoyan, the director behind the critically acclaimed Exotica (1994) and The Sweet Hereafter (1997).…

  • Calvary (2014)

    Brendan Gleeson exudes world-weariness as if it were a pheromone. Craggy and thick-bodied, his eyes hinting at untold sadness, he routinely makes a strong presence in most of his movies, no matter how modest the part. And he is at his dour best in Calvary, a tough, theologically minded film in which Gleeson portrays a…

  • Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)

    The first thing you might notice about the vampires in Only Lovers Left Alive is how effortlessly cosmopolitan they are. Smart, artsy, sexy — these undead are unequivocally cool. That’s no surprise when you consider this is the work of writer-director Jim Jarmusch, a purveyor of the idiosyncratic (Dead Man, Night on Earth, Ghost Dog:…