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Don Jon is about addiction, obsession, and compulsion. It's about how the elements that drive and define our lives can impede normal, productive behavior. And, unlike a dark film like Shame, which deals with the same subject, it attacks its thesis ...

I have done my best to avoid spoilers and, although I’d love to get into specifics about what’s wrong with the movie, such an approach would require revealing plot twists. So, although I won’t go that far, some of the “comparison” movies...

As a character study that examines a pair of reprehensible individuals, The Door in the Floor does an excellent job. The problem with the film is simple: how many people want to spend nearly two hours in the company of such characters. The viewe...

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...

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...

If you don’t know who the Earl of Grantham is, you can probably stop here. If you don’t know Lady Mary’s tragic history, this movie may not be for you. And if you aren’t breathlessly awaiting the next cutting quip from Lady Violet, the...

The term “fan service” is often used in association with popular genre projects: Marvel films, Star Trek, Star Wars, and the like. The two Downton Abbey films (the first, released in 2019, and its sequel, A New Era) illustrate that even Ma...

Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, like 2019’s Downton Abbey and its 2022 sequel Downton Abbey: A New Age, is comfort food for fans. And there are plenty of them: an estimated 120 million viewers worldwide regularly watched the TV series at its...

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...