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With The Queen, Stephen Frears has at least two items on his agenda: to humanize the head of the British monarchy while at the same time indicating how far removed she has become from the concerns of her subjects. He also poses questions about the...

At least at first, a viewer can be forgiven some consternation understanding what director Jean-Jacques Annaud is attempting to achieve with Quest for Fire. With its Neanderthal-like characters leaping around like apes, the film sometimes feels mo...

John Ford is widely regarded as the best director of Westerns, many of which featured his good friend and favorite actor, John Wayne, as the lead. During a career that spanned nearly six decades (from 1917 through 1966), Ford helmed more than 100 ...

Numerous movies about grief miss the mark by a wide margin, sliding down a slippery slope of schlocky melodrama with overacting performers failing to convince us that their tears are real. Every once in a while, however, a film gets it right. In ...

Race doesn’t challenge our expectations of what constitutes a competent bio-pic. Opting for a straightforward telling of a (mostly) true story, the filmmakers have moved forward with an abundance of reverence. I’m reminded of 2013’s...

Just because a person’s accomplishments are great, it doesn’t follow that a movie about their life and achievements will be equally as compelling. Many feats and undertakings are not inherently cinematic and, no matter what efforts a filmm...

It has been several years since I've read a book by John Grisham (I believe the last one was The Client). After three or four of Grisham's novels, I grew tired of the predictable repetitiveness and contrived suspense of the narratives. As a resul...

I’m not feeling the love. Raw, the 2016 French/Belgian horror film, has received considerable praise across the international cinematic landscape for its contribution to the genre. However, what Raw offers isn’t so much original as it is a repack...

It has been nearly a year since I first saw Read My Lips, and the taste of the film still lingers. Time may leech away the specifics, but the overall impression remains. So it is with many great films. By far, the most impressive French film I s...

"[Ready to Wear/Pret-a-Porter] is just a silly little movie, it's not a serious epic. So just enjoy, laugh with it, have a good time. It's no big deal." - Robert Altman, director of Ready to Wear One wonders whether Robert Altman arrived at ...