Search for Ted K

By wedding comedy with tragedy in intricate, realistic unions, Mike Leigh has become one of the foremost film making voices for the British working class. Yet, even though his movies bring a certain social viewpoint to the screen, this in no way l...

It's a curious thing that the best 1995 adaptation of a Jane Austen book happens to be of her worst novel. Sense and Sensibility was the author's first published work and, as is often the case with early writing efforts, displays an undeniable shal...

Watching The Sense of an Ending, I was struck by the realization that this should have been a good movie. Unfortunately, as is too often the case, something didn’t translate from the written page to the big screen. The source material, Julian B...

For about 75 minutes, Seven Psychopaths is a rollicking good movie - kinetic, clever, funny, and brutal. Then, inexplicably, it falls apart. Perhaps writer/director Martin McDonagh (In Bruges) didn't know how to end it, or perhaps his attempts to d...

As Shaun of the Dead illustrated, it is possible to make a horror comedy that is both funny and scary. Severance, while not nearly as successful as Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's zombie movie, manages to mix in a few good gags with the requisite go...

The oddly-titled Sexy Beast (oddly titled because neither of the main characters is sexy, although both are certainly beasts) focuses on a husband's determination to honor a promise he made to his wife. The movie, the debut effort from British dir...

"What was [Joy] to me? She was my daughter and my mother, my pupil and my teacher, my subject and my sovereign; and always, holding all these in solution, my trusty comrade, friend, shipmate, fellow-soldier. My mistress; but at the same time all ...

In 1998, there have been two films about space debris on a collision course with Earth, two animated insect movies, and now two tales about life during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Granted, there's a yawning chasm in tone between the dark, treach...

A couple of cliches come to mind while watching Danny Boyle's deliciously diabolical feature debut, Shallow Grave. The first -- that money is the root of all evil -- is obvious. The other -- that it's always the quiet ones who bear the closes...

Spoiler warning: In discussing the movie, I have revealed more about the plot than I normally do, including a brief, oblique reference to the ending. Although Shame is not narrative-driven, those who want a "pure" experience may wish to read no fur...