Visions of a Vision in Knock at the Cabin
M. Night Shyamalan continues his winning streak with a well-acted high-concept thriller about the end-times. It’s more smoke than fire though.
M. Night Shyamalan continues his winning streak with a well-acted high-concept thriller about the end-times. It’s more smoke than fire though.
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio shimmers with excited physical energy but never coordinates its new story ideas with its old moral responsibilities.
The Pale Blue Eye has the cast of a masterpiece and the script of a write-off. It’s inoffensive afternoon viewing, but Poe would have his name removed from it.
The 1951 version of Scrooge effortlessly recreates its candleglow world. This classic story has never been better.
The unassailable influence of Stanley Kubrick’s horror staple hides its dramatic shortcomings behind an illusion of prestige.
Peter Dinklage is a powerful force for good in an otherwise listless adaptation that misinterprets whatever it doesn’t omit entirely.
The Revenant is a powerful statement on cinematic realism affected but not marred by its real toil. It’s old cinema made epic again.
The 15th anniversary of Zodiac is the perfect occasion to revisit David Fincher’s best film and see how the thriller epic holds up in 2022.
With First Man, Damien Chazelle takes us to space and still thinks the most important things are the ones we left behind. The best film of 2018.
Brooklyn is a well-meaning new version of the kind of movie we used to make much more easily. It’s not masterful, but at least it’s respectable.
An analysis of Villeneuve’s dreamy thriller, Hitchcock accelerated to spiritual attack speed. Arachnophobes beware.
Conan the Barbarian throws itself into the brutal past, wielding its actor’s charm like a broadsword. Only plot conventions are strong enough to hurt him.
Alice Through the Looking Glass is to wonderment what purging is to eating. It not only robs you of your meal – it even makes you regret it.
Primal Fear reuses courtroom thriller tropes without revising them. But the cast makes them live again, at least as the ultimate TNT cable drama.
Paddington 2 sparkles with manners and a belief in beauty. Everyone was opening the doors for each other on the way out of the theater.
The first Harry Potter film is not an epic but an invitation. Dark as a forest. Nice as a librarian. Warm as a fireplace.