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Rear Window

“It makes a strange sort of sense that the hero of Rear Window is confined to a wheelchair in his apartment. His immobilization only highlights his character’s obsession and fascination with voyeurism, hinted at with the opening crawl through his apartment that slowly caresses a broken camera and t” read more

High Noon

“A tough, lean 85 minutes marks High Noon as a study in economy. There’s no fat in any of the stories, the characters feel authentic and lived-in, the pace never wavers, and the tension slowly increases until the nail-biter of a climatic shootout. High Noon uses all of the pieces of a typical weste” read more

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

“After a five year dry spell, the Pirates of the Caribbean returned with a new director (Rob Marshall), two returning players (Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush), and minus two others (Keira Knightly and Orlando Bloom). On Stranger Tides, based on a novel by Tim Powers, is what a franchise looks like whe” read more

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

“If the prior year’s Dead Man’s Chest was a rollercoaster that consistently threatened to careen wildly off the tracks at any moment, then At World’s End is a whirligig on a crumbling foundation. The sense of bloat that’s always threatened to devour these films reaches its apex here, with nea” read more

Queen of Katwe

“True emotional uplift is hard to accomplish in the movies, especially in “based on a true story” variations that trend towards easy emotional manipulation and sugary sentimentality. Leave it to a more idiosyncratic director like Mira Nair to take the “child prodigy-made-good-through-sports” ” read more

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

“Everything wrong with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest can be perfectly summarized in the frenzied battle that encapsulates much of the climax. There’s Will, Jack, and a dispossessed Commodore Norrington (Jack Davenport) fighting in a gigantic spinning wheel across an island terrain. M” read more

Pirates of the Caribbean

“Forgive the groan-worthy pun, but the pirate film genre was dead in the water by this point. Cutthroat Island was the most recent big-budget pirate film, and it was a notorious bomb in 1995. More ominous signs loomed over Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl prior to its release. H” read more

Eyes Wide Shut

“Mystique and contradictory impulses abound in Eyes Wide Shut, the final film from cinematic master Stanley Kubrick. Is everything we are witnessing but a strange dream, a stroll through the subterranean sexual lives of Manhattanites both rich and poor, or is this happening in real time? Does it real” read more

Liebestraum

“Operating under the logic of dreams, with everyone delivering their dialog at a sleepy pace, Liebestraum is a series of beautiful images signifying nothing of interest. All it offers is moody and stylish surfaces, interminable verbal exchanges about architectural designs, and a central mystery that ” read more

The Mirror Crack'd

“Agatha Christie’s star-studded film adaptations are perfect excuses for slumming movie stars to have a bit of fun with a polite murder-mystery story. They line up in a series of eccentric roles, providing a colorful, and loud, cast of characters to bicker, plot, and deliver red herrings galore, be” read more