Search for Shell

Most directors have their obsessions and many of them, when realized, disappoint on one level or another, oftentimes because the filmmaker lacks distance. They have crafted the movie so lovingly in their minds over the years—visualizing every sh...

As a noisy, CGI-saturated spectacle, there’s no arguing that Ghost in the Shell gets the job done. Every cent spent on the movie appears to have made it into the final cut – an indication that the actors probably did most of their work in ...

Greyhound is an atypical film: a World War II thriller that doesn’t aspire to be an epic. Most productions set during the early 1940s – even those made by blockbuster-minded directors – carry running times that are as bloated as their gr...

Disney's Hidalgo, about a late 19th century long distance horse race across the Arabian Desert, is a sporadically entertaining adventure movie that is hampered by poor pacing, a badly focused screenplay, and cheesy special effects. Seabiscuit this...

It’s probably fair to say that Liam Neeson could do this role in his sleep. Perhaps that would explain the curious lack of energy not only in his performance but in the production as a whole. Ever since Neeson became accepted as an action st...

Hounddog began its public life at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, where it was inauspiciously dubbed "the Dakota Fanning rape film." Poor audience and critical reception led the director to "re-work" the movie, which emerged from limbo for limite...

The House Bunny has a screenplay written with ten-year olds in mind about a subject that deserves an R-rating. The resulting hodgepodge of unfunny, sophomoric humor and PG-13 T&A, frosted by a sheen of appallingly nauseous "drama," makes for such ...

Relatively speaking, Jurassic Park III is a disappointment of behemoth proportions. With Steven Spielberg gone from the director's chair (replaced by Jumanji's Joe Johnston), the Jurassic Park saga has sunk down to its B-grade monster movie roots....

It’s a cliché to remark that “they don’t make them like they used to” but, in the case of Marty, it’s true. The simple, character-based romance is a thing of the past; even indie filmmakers rarely attempt it today. The first thing o...

"In the last 20, 30 years, [Frankenstein has] been claimed by a whole generation of academics and scholars as a seminal piece of literature of that time. [It's] something which now, post-Freud, they feel reveals so many observations about family l...