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When it comes to movies about dysfunctional family relationships and emotionally damaged individuals, few active filmmakers do a better job than veteran French director André Techiné (whose films, especially Wild Reeds, have been modest art-house...

A take-notice performance from Anna Kendrick (who drops the f-bomb more times than in all of her previous roles combined) can’t hide how threadbare and ultimately unsatisfying the narrative of Alice, Darling is. Written without much concern for ...

Over a career that has spanned more than a half-century, Robert Redford has played his share of interesting and well-remembered roles, from The Sundance Kid (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) to Bob Woodward (All the President's Men) to Roy Hobbs...

I have always felt that Fellini is an acquired taste, and it’s one for which I never developed a ravenous appetite. While I value the director’s flamboyancy, his work has never connected with me in the same way as the output of many of the...

Years ago, while watching Delicatessen (in 1992) and The City of Lost Children (in 1995), I wondered which of the co-directors, Jean-Pierre Jeunet or Marc Caro, was more responsible for the films' quirky tone and striking visual style. Although Ca...

An American Werewolf in Paris is a failed attempt to recapture the humor and horror of John Landis' 1981 feature, An American Werewolf in London. Where the original had comedy, the sequel has the kind of revolting silliness that can be found in TV...

Here's a word analogy: Amistad is to The Lost World as Schindler's List is to Jurassic Park. In 1993, after Steven Spielberg made the monster dino hit, many critics described Schindler's List as the director's "penance" (as if there was a need for...

Repression and desire are often inextricably entwined, with the two dynamics in opposition. Such is the case in Francis Lee’s clear-eyed but heart-wrenching period drama, Ammonite. As much a tale of the patriarchal suffocation of those who b...

Films can be tremendous vehicles for escapism - paths to freeing oneself from worldly concerns and considerations. They can also be a means of getting in touch with essential elements of humanity such as love, sacrifice, and mortality. Those three ...