Category: Year

  • 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…

  • Everlasting Moments (2008)

    At first blush, Everlasting Moments seems like a litany of art-house clichés. Set in early 20th century Sweden, its saga of a quiet, strong-willed woman and her lout of a husband sounds pretentious enough to starch a collar, but the film transcends the sum of its well-worn plot. The great Swedish director Jan Troell, whose works include…

  • Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (2010)

    It would have been easy for Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work to take a by-the-numbers approach to its subject. Among the true pioneers of edgy stand-up comedy (she joked about having sex and abortions long before such topics became fodder for Amy Schumer and her ilk), Joan Rivers was instrumental in paving the way…

  • Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

    With a knockout of a premise and an ample supply of firepower, Assault on Precinct 13 heralded the arrival of a promising, workmanlike genre director in John Carpenter. The action-thriller slipped in an out of U.S. theaters in 1976 with little fanfare, but quickly achieved cult status across the Atlantic and helped set the stage for Carpenter’s…