Film Search
- Jul 14, 2005
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Barry Lyndon (PG)
All of Stanley Kubrick's features look better now than when they were first released, but Barry Lyndon, which fared poorly at the box office in 1975, remains his most underrated. more...
- Aug 14, 1985
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E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (PG)
Steven Spielberg's 1982 film achieves the level of decent, middling Disney—Old Yeller, for example, rather than Snow White or Pinocchio—which is to say that the childhood myths being promulgated here are rather basic and unadorned, without the baroque touches and psychological penetration Disney could muster at his best. more...
- Jun 10, 2013
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Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (PG)
Chris Columbus, who directed the first two Harry Potter movies, has passed the wand to Alfonso Cuaron (Y Tu Mama Tambien), and in contrast to Columbus's bloated theme-park rides, this third installment (2004) more closely approximates the character-driven storytelling of J.K. Rowling's beloved children's books. more...
- Jul 23, 2008
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Kung Fu Panda (PG)
Hands down the most visually striking of DreamWorks Animation's releases, this lively CGI comedy (2008) is tailor-made for Jack Black, who voices Po, a sweet but timid roly-poly panda in ancient China who idolizes his martial arts heroes, the Furious Five. more...
- Nov 7, 2008
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Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (PG)
In this nutty sequel to the 2005 Dreamworks 3-D animated hit, four best friends and former stars of the Central Park Zoo—a dancing lion (voiced by Ben Stiller), a rollicking zebra (Chris Rock), a lugubrious giraffe (David Schwimmer), and a hippo diva (Jada Pinkett Smith)—look forward to trading their current island residence on Madagascar for their old island home of Manhattan. more...
- Mar 29, 2012
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Mirror Mirror (PG)
Reviewing Tarsem Singh's grisly sword-and-sandal epic Immortals (2011), I took a stab at prognostication and described him as "a talented and eccentric visual artist with no creative future in the movie business." more...
- Aug 23, 2002
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Mommie Dearest (PG)
In spite of its reputation, and thanks in part to Faye Dunaway's remarkable performance as Joan Crawford, this 1981 adaptation of Christina Crawford's memoir about her driven, abusive mother is arguably too good to qualify as camp, even if it begins (and fitfully proceeds) like a horror film. more...
- Mar 26, 2009
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Monsters vs. Aliens (PG)
Aside from shots of Saturn's rings, an exploding planet, and a computer geek playing paddleball, the 3-D effects of this DreamWorks animation don't jump out at you, which suggests the format may be moving beyond gimmickry. more...
- Jan 19, 2010
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The Princess Bride (PG)
Rob Reiner's friendly 1987 fairy-tale adventure delicately mines the irony inherent in its make-believe without ever undermining the effectiveness of the fantasy. more...
- Dec 21, 2011
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Rear Window (PG)
The most densely allegorical of Alfred Hitchcock's masterpieces (1954), moving from psychology to morality to formal concerns and finally to the theological. more...
