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It's interesting to note that two of the best films I've seen theatrically in 1996 weren't made this year. In fact, they weren't even made this decade. The first, Martin Scorsese's classic, Taxi Driver, is celebrating its twentieth anniversary. ...

Moody and brooding, Scott Teems’ The Quarry falls loosely within a genre that has been dubbed “Western noir” by some critics. Undoubtedly a serious work that attempts to address immigration tensions and personal redemption, the film suff...

The ageless Isabelle Adjani, one of France's most beautiful faces, has an undeniable screen presence. And, with his lean, well-toned body and finely-sculpted features, Vincent Perez is equally pleasing to the eye. However, put them together with ...

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...

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...

Raise the Red Lantern is one of the more sublimely beautiful and openly disturbing films of the 1990s. It is also the best work to date turned in by the actress/director combination of Gong Li and Zhang Yimou -- and this includes other impress...

The Reader is closer to a near miss than a rousing success but, on balance, this is still worth seeing for those who enjoy complexity and moral ambiguity within the context of a melodrama. Based on the novel by Bernhard Schlink, the film asks bi...

Ready Player One brings back a little of the Old Spielberg Magic. No, this isn’t on the level of a Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a Raiders of the Lost Ark, or an E.T. Instead, it’s akin to Jurassic Park: a special effects-laden actio...

1940’s Rebecca was the only Alfred Hitchcock-directed film to win a Best Picture Oscar. Considering the filmmaker’s incredible body of work, that may seem odd, but it’s as much a testimony to the popularity of the source material, Daphe ...

Spoilers Ahead! The movie is 68 years old and it's based on a novel that's even older, but one never knows… It is perhaps the height of irony that the only film directed by the "Master of Suspense" to win a Best Picture Oscar is a gothic melo...