Search for Light

If David Lynch and David Mamet can do it, why not Danny Boyle? I'm talking about hard-R directors suddenly producing a film that is suitable for family viewing. Lynch and Mamet both went G several years ago (Lynch with The Straight Story and Mamet wi...

Despite clocking in at a skinny 84 minutes, Mistress America overstays its welcome. Directed by Noah Baumbach and co-written by Baumbach and ex-mumblecore goddess Greta Gerwig, the film is characterized by long passages of self-conscious dialogue tha...

On the surface, Moonlight presents three formative episodes in the life of a gay black man, but taking such a bird’s eye view of the film misses all the details and nuances. Although Barry Jenkins’ film is indeed about the struggles and d...

When I first saw the trailer for Moonlight Mile, it raised a few red flags, but I was at least comforted by the realization that Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon, the film's stars, are usually reasonably choosy about the roles they tackle. In mak...

The enduring popularity of Daphne Du Maurier’s 1951 novel, My Cousin Rachel, relates to the ambiguity surrounding the title character. In his solid 2017 adaptation of the book, screenwriter/director Roger Michell (Notting Hill) has captured the...

Words cannot express how weary I am of watching lifeless, hollow movies like My Life in Ruins - generic romantic comedies that have no clue when it comes to either "romance" or "comedy." The films aren't quite poorly enough made to label them "bad...

The Namesake is an affecting drama spanning two generations of an Indian American family and exploring the generational and cultural conflicts that arise as a result of their assimilation into society. By carefully developing her characters and al...

Napoleon Dynamite should be required therapy for anyone with a self-image problem. No matter how much of a loser a person believes himself to be, he couldn't possibly be in worse shape than the protagonist of Jared Hess' wickedly funny high school...

It is an accepted truth that adapting a sublime novel does not always result in a sublime movie. To an extent, this is the problem with Never Let Me Go, Alex Garland's adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguru's book. The film's tone, which attempts to captur...

Dread – it’s the lifeblood of any good horror movie/ghost story. Blood, gore, and a high body count are all nice accompaniments, but for a film in the genre to work, it has to fill the viewer with an almost suffocating sense of doom. When ...