Search for Michael

Once, in seemingly another lifetime, the name "Clint Eastwood" was synonymous with Spaghetti Westerns and the Man With No Name. In the '70s and '80s, he was Dirty Harry, the tough cop with a quotable one-liner for seemingly any situation. More re...

In the movie business, there's no such thing as "truth in titling." If there was, Bobby would be called A Bunch of Boring, No-Name, Cookie-Cutter Characters. Although that lacks the brevity and appeal of the real title, it's more illustrative of ...

There was a time during the long history of the adult entertainment industry that porn films showed signs of artistic ambition. During the late '70s, a small cadre of directors believed that they could combine the raunch of real sex with an in...

Warning: Potential spoilers, although they reveal only things from the first half of the movie. If you look hard enough, it’s possible to find worthwhile elements in The Book of Henry, an overwrought, tonally inconsistent drama about cancer, ...

I don't know whether Markus Zusak's young adult bestelling novel The Book Thief should be considered "unfilmable" but the adaptation, written by Michael Petroni and directed by Brian Percival, makes a compelling case that it shouldn't have been fil...

While there will always be a debate about the authenticity of Michael Moore's documentary techniques, there's no arguing that Bowling for Columbine succeeds equally well as a provocative essay on gun violence in America and an opportunity for the w...

At first glance, it appears that Braven might be more than what it turns out to be. The opening credits feature a montage of shots of the wilds of Newfoundland – images so stunningly beautiful that they would be at home in a nature documentar...

Terry Gilliam's Brazil is one of those films whose enduring reputation is based at least in part on events surrounding its stormy distribution history. Taken at face value, Brazil is a stinging, Strangelovian satire of the power of the bureaucracy...

One of the positive qualities often attributed to movies in which Judd Apatow claims involvement (here, he's listed as a producer) is that, beneath all the raunchiness and profanity, lies a core of sweetness. It's the Tootsie Pop philosophy of R-ra...

Although it's certainly a matter for argument, many cineastes consider David Lean to be one of the ten best directors of lavish epics. Although several of Lean's most accomplished movies were made while he was based in the U.K., they nevertheless ...