Category: Film

  • Don’t Worry Darling (2022)

    After all the offscreen drama that surrounded the Venice Film Festival premiere of Don’t Worry Darling, you would have expected a dumpster fire of a movie. But it isn’t that. While Olivia Wilde’s sophomore directorial outing (after 2019’s Booksmart) isn’t an entirely satisfying thriller, it’s also not exactly a dud. Think of it as a…

  • Coraline (2009)

    Picasso mused that every child is born an artist, but that the hard part is how to remain one after they grow up. Nothing is more surreal or vivid than the imagination of a child, where even the most seemingly mundane experience can evoke stark fear or unbridled joy. It’s a frontier ripe for storytellers,…

  • (500) Days of Summer (2009)

    Romantic comedies can be as propagandistic as any jingoistic World War II-era flag-waver, playing in the sandbox of audiences’ lovesick fantasies while paying only lip service to the messy reality of relationships. That’s why you have to admire a picture as cheerfully impish as (500) Days of Summer and the zeal with which it both…

  • Approved for Adoption (2012)

    Jung was 5 years old and wandering a South Korean street by himself when he was found by a policeman. The Western world awaited; the boy would be among more than 200,000 Korean children adopted in the aftermath of the Korean War. In May 1971, a Belgian family brought Jung Henin home. “It was like…

  • Saboteur (1942)

    Saboteur is hardly top-tier Alfred Hitchcock, but even below-par Hitch is damned entertaining. And this wartime suspense yarn certainly holds your interest. It relies on a familiar theme of the director’s — an innocent man wrongly accused of a crime embarks on a cross-country chase to clear his good name — that he had used in…

  • Boyhood (2014)

    The swooning of critics over Boyhood upon its theatrical release reached near-embarrassing heights. There’s no getting around it; this is a remarkable movie and a testament to the singular vision of writer-director Richard Linklater. And while that doesn’t make Boyhood an unqualified triumph, its minor deficiencies are more than made up for by its overall…

  • Up In Smoke (1978)

    In the annals of immortal comedy teams, the pairing of Pedro “Cheech” Marin and Tommy Chong might not rise to the level of, say, Nichols and May (or even Abbott and Costello, for that matter) but none were better at tapping into a specific subculture. Ascending to stardom on a cloud of pot smoke in…

  • 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…