Orson Welles's second movie, taken from the Booth Tarkington novel, is stronger than his first, Citizen Kane, in most ways -- in coherence, in complexity, in common sense. Welles himself, for a change and for a relief and for a better balance, isn't on screen in this one. The story …
The first of Douglas Sirk's series of Technicolor soap operas (and one of his handful of remakes of John Stahl's black-and-white soap operas) that so endeared him to R.W. Fassbinder, among other cultists and auteurists. The storyline, from Lloyd C. Douglas's mystico-romantic novel about a young wastrel who hopes to …
The title is about one-seventh right: Denzel Washington, from the moment his black-clad form rides into view over a golden ridge, is pretty gosh-darn magnificent as Chisolm, a wide-ranging lawman possessed of a carefully cultivated calm, a deadly eye, and a crazy-quick draw. Unfortunately for Antoine Fuqua’s remake of the …
A multi-character affair traversing a single day in the San Fernando Valley -- in three hours of screen time. Paul Thomas Anderson, writer and director, starts off with a narrated prologue to set up the theme of chance and coincidence throughout human history, or at least throughout the last century …
When not involved in drumming up admiration and chuckles for Clint Eastwood, with glib subplots and wisecracks, this Dirty Harry follow-up noses around a potential good idea about a secret "death squad" within the police force that institutes select executions free of judicial red tape. Ted Post's direction is professional, …
Dileesh Pothan directs this comedy-drama about a wedding/funeral photographer. In Malayalam.
Another of Ken Russell's bumptious and self-serving "biographies" of canonized artists, this one more disjointed than most, as it riffles through the memories, fantasies, and dreams that enliven the Austrian composer's train trip back to Vienna after a collapse of health in New York City. Some of these visions -- …
Diana Ross climbs to fame, from a dressmaking factory in the Chicago slums to the international fashion scene in Rome, while Billy Dee Williams supplies the nagging voice of conscience, stays home, wears bluejeans, talks on streetcorners through a bullhorn, and toils tirelessly for the betterment of His People. This …
Inside the small world of a long-time live-in domestic in middle-class Chile, unable any longer to keep up with her chores but unable to abide an assistant (i.e., a rival). A portrait of dark psychology in a milky image, matter-of-factly presented by director Sebastián Silva, stolidly, solidly acted by Catalina …