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Of the eight movies committed to celluloid by director Kenneth Branagh, five of them have been either adapted from one of Shakespeare's plays (Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, Love's Labour's Lost) or have made significant use of the Bard's...

Dear Frankie, the feature debut of director Shona Auerbach, is a cinematic definition of mediocrity. Neither awful nor impressive, it features moments of genuine power and instances when it is cloying. The end result is an unremarkable, unmemorab...

Despite being directed by a Yank, Death at a Funeral has a very British flavour. In fact, at times it reminded me of nothing less than an extended episode of Fawlty Towers, minus the manic genius of John Cleese. The film begins slowly, with occas...

Roger Ebert once said that, if done right, any topic could be the subject of a comedy. In that spirit, consider The Death of Stalin. From the title, one might assume that this is a serious look at a seminal event of 20th Century world history. ...

There's a lot going on in Deterrence, the directorial debut of journalist-turned-filmmaker Rod Lurie. Presidential election politics. An international crisis. The threat of nuclear war. All that, plus a blizzard that keeps the President trappe...

It seems that in a period detective story, it's a prerequisite for the main character to narrate the proceedings. In Devil in a Blue Dress, writer/director Carl Franklin apparently intended this conceit as a tribute to the Dashiell Hammett/Raymond...

The Devil Wears Prada is two films in one: a caustic, energetic satire of the fashion world and a cautionary melodrama. The first works; the second doesn't. Fortunately, the running time of the former doubles that of the latter, making The Devil ...

Floating around the art house circuit these days is a restored version of Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1955 murder mystery, Diabolique. Easily overlooked because of its limited re-release distribution, this picture may demand some active searching to u...