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It’s hard to assign a rating to something like Pet Sematary. This new adaptation of the popular Stephen King novel matches the book when it comes to dread and nihilism. Bad things happen to good people with no hope of redemption, salvation, o...

With his third directorial effort, Kenneth Branagh (who has already done the Shakespearean Henry V and the noir thriller Dead Again) sets his sights a smaller sort of picture. Peter's Friends is a slice-of-life movie that illustrates the reunion o...

With a title like Phantom, one might easily assume that this movie is a ghost story. In actuality, however, it's a submarine thriller loosely based on actual events from 1968. The tale told by Phantom falls into the realm of "historical fiction." A...

I have never been a fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber's phenomenally popular stage musical version of The Phantom of the Opera, so it will probably come as no surprise that the film adaptation, which is faithful to its inspiration, left me feeling underwh...

Phantom Thread, Paul Thomas Anderson’s follow-up to 2014’s Inherent Vice, feels a little like a mash-up of Bergman and Hitchcock without the verve of the latter and the subtleties of the former. What begins as a stately costume drama set i...

It's probably unfair to characterize The Phantom as a Batman-wannabe, since Lee Falk's comic book creation predated the Caped Crusader. Nevertheless, as far as motion picture adaptations are concerned, Michael Keaton first stepped into his suit se...

Some will argue that a film, being essentially a means of entertainment, can do little to change a national consciousness. Others, citing the power of the medium, will claim that motion pictures possess this rare and extraordinary ability. These ...

Part mystery investigation, part mismatched buddy film, and part condemnation of inhumane attitudes in 1950s Ireland and 1980s Washington, Philomena falls into the category of "too unbelievable to be fiction." Faithfully based on the true story tol...

The older he has gotten, the more offbeat his films have become. Now, to be clear, Wes Anderson has never been a conventional filmmaker. His movies have always appealed more to niche audiences than mainstream ones. (My favorite of his oeuvre, ...

Phone Booth became one of a number of post-9/11 films to fall victim to an increasing reluctance on the part of motion picture studios to release movies where on-screen events echo real-world tragedies. Joel Schumacher's thriller was originally se...