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Spoilers! (Not sure if such a warning is needed – the movie is 75 years old.)In concert with 1941’s The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity was at the forefront of a stylistic innovation that would become known as “film noir.” Directors J...

This review contains spoilers. I try to be discreet about them but they are there.No one can dance through genres as blithely as Francois Ozon. From the comedic drama of Water Drops on Burning Rocks to the mystery of Under the Sand to the ecce...

It's one of life's bitter ironies that one of the first things lost to moral certainty is the capacity for compassion. Righteousness is a cold, hard position, and an unshakeable one. It allows no room for one of the most basic tenants of human exi...

Downfall is the third major filmed account of Hitler's final ten days, following in the distant wake of 1973's Hitler: The Last Ten Days and 1981's The Bunker. A superior production to both of the earlier movies, Downfall is a windfall for anyone w...

When I first heard that Twentieth Century Fox intended to re-make Dr. Dolittle with Eddie Murphy in the title role, I suspected that it was a bad move (the success of The Nutty Professor notwithstanding). Now that I have endured the 85 minute moti...

About the most positive comment I can offer about Dr. Dolittle 2 is that it's not as painful to endure as its 1998 predecessor, Dr. Dolittle. Unlike the earlier Eddie Murphy effort about the M.D. who can talk with animals, the second installment m...

Barring a television adaptation of Casino Royale in the 1950s (not to be confused with the 1967 movie of the same name), 1962's Dr. No was the first opportunity fans of Ian Fleming's James Bond had to watch the intrepid superspy in action. Ho...

When you consider the history of motion pictures, certain watershed films leap to mind -- productions which have left their mark on the craft. Without a doubt, one of those is Stanley Kubrik's 1964 masterpiece, Dr. Strangelove (or, as it's subtitl...

The golden era of Universal monster movies began in early 1931 with the release of Dracula, which, despite shaky acting and even shakier direction, is nevertheless regarded as one of the seminal early talkies - a movie that not only helped to keep ...

Having watched Luc Besson’s Dracula as a companion piece to Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, I have reached a grim conclusion: it is time to let these two iconic monsters sleep forever. No matter how "unique" a director’s vision may be, or...