Movies starring Michael Douglas

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...

When it comes to dark satires of the romantic comedy genre, few films are more vicious than Danny DeVito's 1989 offering, The War of the Roses. The film revels in its blackness in a way that few films during the last several decades have; even th...

Recently, Barry Levinson's career has been on the skids. After two critical and popular disasters (the overblown, overbudgeted Toys and the lackluster Jimmy Hollywood), the director is in need of a success. With this adaptation of Michael Crichton...

Alfred Hitchcock used the term "refrigerator movie" to describe certain films. According to the great director, refrigerator movies are well-paced thrillers that work effectively while being watched, but fall apart upon later examination (whil...

Back in mid-'90s, director Curtis Hanson was known as a B-list filmmaker - someone who could cull a fair amount of tension out of workmanlike stories such as The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and The River Wild. All of that changed in 1997, however, ...

One phrase - perhaps the best-known one from any 1987 release - encapsulates a critical component of '80s culture that once again crept to the fore in the late-'00s. I am, of course, referring to Gorden Gekko's "Greed… is good." A vice transfor...

Gordon Gekko lives! But then we all know that - Oliver Stone and Michael Douglas have filmed a sequel to Wall Street that is currently sitting on shelves awaiting its late September 2010 release. However, Douglas gives us a preview of what an alt...

Steven Soderbergh's Haywire exhibits a remarkable economy of screen time - unusual in an era of bloated action films in which even throw-aways challenge the two hour mark. In fact, one could argue that Haywire is too short. It's enjoyable enough,...

Bill (Michael Douglas) is having a bad morning. He's stuck in his car in a traffic jam, his air conditioner isn't putting out any cold air, his windows won't work, and there's a fly buzzing around his head. Taken as a whole, all of this is enough...

King of California is the second movie opening this month to feature Evan Rachel Wood and, while it's better than the other one (Across the Universe), it's not that much better. Wood's performance is at about the same level, albeit without the sing...