Movies starring Natalie Portman

May December, loosely based on the Mary Kay Letourneau scandal from the late 1990s, examines the long-term impacts on the lives of those involved in an adult/child sexual relationship that evolves over a lengthy period. As presented through the le...

Boiled down to its essence, Thor: Love and Thunder is just another comic book movie – a celebration of the tropes that have made each new MCU entry an opportunity for Disney to fatten its coffers. Nevertheless, “it” director Taika Waitit...

Vox Lux opens with a shock to the system – a scene so stark and well-crafted that its aftermath lingers even as it informs the life decisions of Celeste, the movie’s central character. The movie starts out immersed in normalcy – a high s...

Science fiction means different things to different people. For some, it’s the quasi-fantasy/space opera of Star Wars. For others, it’s allegorical space-faring material like Star Trek. And for still others, it encompasses a strongly techni...

Here’s a link to my original review of Heat, published in December 1995.At the time of its 1995 release, Heat was heralded primarily as offering the first on-screen pairing of legends Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Although the two had shared t...

Feature film biographies like Jackie inhabit difficult terrain. They are servants to two masters: the historical record and the needs of artistry. From time-to-time, a great one like Patton or Lincoln comes along but most are run-of-the-mill affairs ...

Revenge of the Sith is the most technically accomplished of all the Star Wars movies. Putting aside other important aspects of the cinematic experience (like storytelling, for example), it’s hard to argue that the special effects work in the th...

Attack of the Clones suffers from "middle episode syndrome" - the tendency of the second volume in a trilogy to feel incomplete and, as a result of that incompleteness, to fail to satisfy. (A problem George Lucas was able to avoid with The ...

Not since the days of Bond-mania in the early 1960s had the release of a movie been as anticipated as the first of George Lucas' Star Wars prequels. Before The Phantom Menace reached screens, Lucas was geeks' Golden Boy and the term "pre...

Thor: The Dark World offers the kind of straightforward action/adventure yarn that adherents of the genre will appreciate. It's an example of superhero filmmaking 101 at work with high octane fights and special effects-fueled eye candy trumping nar...