Search for Arti

Top Gun is an ‘80s testosterone fix – a celebration of machismo and a recruiting film for the U.S. Navy. Typical of Jerry Bruckheimer/Don Simpson at their peak, the movie embraces masculine tropes to create a patchwork narrative that is almost...

Trade is a straightforward and uninspired look at the sex trade, where girls are kidnapped and forced into prostitution. To its credit, the film avoids titillation but, at the same time, it is so full of moral outrage that there's no sense of dram...

During the Spring of 1990, I remember being transfixed in front of the television set for an hour each Sunday night over a period of five weeks. The occasion was the "Masterpiece Theater" presentation of the British mini-series "Traffik", a comple...

Traitor is an uncommonly intelligent espionage thriller that explores the moral and ethical dilemmas faced by agents who go deep undercover in the service of their country. For movies that revolve around terrorist organizations and acts, there a...

Pardon me for wondering if director Michael Winterbottom is obsessed with cock (with or without the bull). Maybe I'm just saying that because I have been unfortunate enough to see his previous outing, 9 Songs, which avoided showing up behind the c...

Two of the most enjoyable disaster films I have seen in the past half-dozen years have emerged not from the powerhouse studios in Hollywood but from Norway. The first was the 2015 tsunami movie, The Wave, and the second was released in 2019 (b...

As movie-goers, we expect different things from big-budget summer blockbusters than we do from "normal" films. Considerations of theme and character become secondary to action and mind- numbing excitement. The plot is expected to be very basic...

Welcome to film noir, Soderbergh-style. For his latest effort (and fourth feature), the talented director who made the dialogue-and-character-rich sex, lies, and videotape turns his attention to this talky update of 1949's Criss Cross. Focus...

Going into this film, I wondered whether the filmmakers would succeed at generating tension out of an event whose outcome is so well-known. Even those with only a rudimentary knowledge of history are aware that Hitler did not die as the result of ...