‘Pavarotti’ Film Review: Ron Howard Doc Humanizes Opera Legend
Watching Ron Howard enlist an all-star cast of experts, industry luminaries and celebrities to catalog Luciano Pavarotti’s many, many achievements as a singer, it’s easy to think that the filmmaker...
View Article‘Rolling Thunder Revue’ Film Review: Martin Scorsese Chronicles Bob Dylan’s...
Longtime Bob Dylan fans know Rolling Thunder Revue as one of the enigmatic singer-songwriter’s most legendary tours, so it should come as little surprise that Martin Scorsese decided to indulge in some...
View Article‘Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes’ Film Review: Documentary Crams Ten...
Jazz is an art form that can be examined any number of ways — historically, racially, structurally, even philosophically — but choosing one of those runs the risk of ignoring the equally-important...
View ArticleAll 13 Danny Boyle Films, Ranked From Worst to Best (Photos)
Danny Boyle is a filmmaker with undeniable style, and his earliest works distinguished him among a crop of up-and-comers as a cinematic voice worth paying attention to. Since then, however, that style...
View ArticleAll 9 ‘Fast & Furious’ Movies Ranked From Worst to Best, Including ‘Hobbs &...
The “Fast & Furious” franchise is easy to dismiss as big, silly or even bad — but it’s definitely awesome. The distinction may seem nebulous, but measuring each film’s success or failure has less...
View Article’47 Meters Down: Uncaged’ Film Review: Shark-Bait Sequel Delivers the Goods
Returning to the well — or in this case, a submerged cave system — for his second film in which thrills are in more abundant supply than oxygen, Johannes Roberts reconfirms the enduring dramatic...
View Article‘Angel Has Fallen’ Film Review: Gerard Butler Lurches Through Pointless,...
No one has ever accused a Gerard Butler action movie of being too smart, but “Angel Has Fallen” operates on such a level of half-considered logic and improbable motivations that even moderately...
View Article‘Jawline’ Film Review: Social-Media Influence Gets Tough But Compassionate...
For anyone over a certain age, the job of social media influencer exists purely in quotation marks, and anyone aspiring to be one is contemptible at best. But the new documentary “Jawline” offers a...
View Article‘Sweetheart’ Film Review: Kiersey Clemons Plays a Desert-Island Survivor,...
A perhaps necessary reminder in the wake of “The Shape of Water” that sea creatures, as a rule, should probably not be looked at as romantic partners, “Sweetheart” complicates — and elevates — a...
View Article‘Jesus Is King’ Film Review: Kanye West Documentary-Promo Is Both Too Short...
If the press cycle around Kanye West’s 2018 “Wyoming Sessions” marked an extreme if well-earned low point in his ongoing relationship with the public, it also underscored a truth about the notoriously...
View Article‘American Dharma’ Film Review: Errol Morris’ Documentary on Steve Bannon...
The second in a line of documentaries just this year about Stephen K. Bannon, “American Dharma,” like its predecessor, “The Brink,” will succeed or fail to audiences according to how much they feel...
View Article‘Queen & Slim’ Film Review: Lovers on the Lam Saga Reflects a Racially...
In an era where people of color seem to be considered guilty until proven innocent, and the best outcome for them in an encounter with police is just plain surviving, “Queen & Slim” is nothing less...
View Article‘The Aeronauts’ Film Review: Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne’s Balloon...
A would-be slice of British spectacle that most audiences will see only at home, “The Aeronauts” — in tone, technique and story — epitomizes films that are too big for television but not quite enough...
View Article‘The Grudge’ Film Review: Classy Cast Gets Trapped Inside Played-Out Sequel
“The Grudge” may have started in Japan with the horror film “Ju-on,” but after four installments, 16 years, and a villain that cannot die as long as there’s an ounce left of box-office potential in its...
View Article‘The Go-Go’s’ Film Review: Transcendent Rock Doc Examines 1980s Glass-Ceiling...
The meteoric and ruinous rise to fame is more than a movie cliché; it’s a virtual guarantee for just about any artist without his or her head screwed on straight. But “The Go-Go’s” tackles the seminal...
View Article‘Hillary’ Film Review: Hulu Doc Offers a Rich, Layered Look at a Life of...
Literal volumes have been written about Hillary Clinton — her accomplishments, controversies and contradictions — and if Nanette Burstein’s documentary “Hillary” is to be believed, all of them are at...
View Article‘Ordinary Love’ Film Review: Lesley Manville and Liam Neeson Face Day-to-Day...
Announcing modest ambitions with its title, “Ordinary Love” tackles melodramatic subject matter with uncommon, quiet elegance. The story of a husband and wife dealing with a cancer scare, directors...
View Article‘Viral’ Film Review: Documentary Skims the Surface in Exploring Global...
Anti-Semitism is probably too big a subject for any one film to explore and deconstruct adequately, but examining four recent movements or “mutations” in different countries is not the way to...
View Article‘Standing Up, Falling Down’ Film Review: Billy Crystal and Ben Schwartz...
Coming of age is always a lot less fun when you’re already grown up, a truth astutely understood in “Standing Up, Falling Down.” Chronicling a stand-up comedian’s disgraceful return home after failing...
View Article‘The Way Back’ Film Review: Ben Affleck Battles His Demons in Tough-Minded...
Gavin O’Connor is so skilled at eliciting suspense and excitement from buzzer-beater clichés that it’s easy to mistake “The Way Back” for another sports movie in the vein of “Miracle” or “Warrior.” But...
View Article‘Run This Town’ Film Review: Ben Platt’s Composite Journalist Pursues the Rob...
Questionable journalism and problematic civil service collide in “Run This Town,” writer-director Ricky Tollman’s dramatization of former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s final year in office. Ben Platt plays...
View Article‘Lost Girls’ Film Review: Amy Ryan’s Grieving Mom Demands Answers in Somewhat...
Unsated curiosity after watching a dramatization of real-life events — that rush to Google names, faces and dates — is quite frequently a validation of the importance or intrigue of a subject. But a...
View Article‘Old’ Film Review: M Night Shyamalan’s Rug-Pulling Routine Is Getting, Well,...
The gulf between M. Night Shyamalan’s good films and his bad ones is now so broad that it seems impossible to believe that they’re made by the same writer-director, were they not so aggressively...
View Article‘The Protégé’ Film Review: Maggie Q Plays Another Female Assassin in...
“La Femme Nikita” was almost certainly not the first film about a young woman rescued from life on the streets to become a cold-blooded assassin, but the success of Luc Besson’s 1990 thriller set a...
View Article‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ Film Review: Marvel’s...
Marvel Comics creators Steve Englehart and Jim Starlin originally conceived martial-arts hero Shang-Chi as a loose composite of the imagery and mythologies of Bruce Lee, Caine from “Kung Fu” (whom Lee...
View Article‘Bernstein’s Wall’ Film Review: Leonard Bernstein Doc Manages to Be Both...
Leonard Bernstein’s closeted sexuality provides a vaguely salacious hook for “Bernstein’s Wall,” a documentary about his life and achievements that devotes time to his liaisons with men before and...
View Article‘The First Wave’ Film Review: Harrowing, Intimate Documentary Revisits the...
It’s easy to want to avoid or turn away from “The First Wave” and the events that it chronicles; after 18 months of worldwide disruption, struggle and loss, you’d be forgiven for not wanting to revisit...
View Article‘Bulletproof’ Film Review: Provocative School-Shooting Doc Ultimately...
Gun violence and in particular the epidemic of school shootings has generated pages and pages of dialogue over the past three decades, in print, on television, and through the halls of the institutions...
View Article‘Antlers’ Film Review: Mythological Horror Tale Heavy on Drama, Light on...
Is there a filmmaker alive who takes himself more seriously than Scott Cooper? Judging from his movies, it seems unlikely. The success of his debut “Crazy Heart” certainly put him on that path, earning...
View Article‘Procession’ Film Review: Powerful Doc Follows Catholic Sex-Abuse Victims...
If, as Roger Ebert famously claimed, movies are “like a machine that generates empathy” for the people who view them, then “Procession” argues that they can also be a machine that generates healing for...
View Article‘tick, tick…Boom!’ Film Review: Lin-Manuel Miranda Pays Homage to the...
Based on “Rent” and now “tick, tick…Boom!,” it seems fair to say that in the worlds that late composer and playwright Jonathan Larson created on stage, there is nothing more important, more vital, than...
View Article‘National Champions’ Film Review: College Football Drama Doesn’t Move the...
In Ric Roman Waugh’s “National Champions,” two student athletes decide to launch a player’s strike two days before a championship game in which their participation is crucial. It’s a story ripped from...
View Article‘The King’s Man’ Film Review: Ralph Fiennes Leads Dopey Spy Saga Prequel
To call “The King’s Man” an improvement from “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” is admittedly damning it with faint praise, but this new entry is undeniably better. The second film in this weird, messy,...
View Article‘jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy,’ Act I Film Review: Doc Series’ First Chapter...
This review of “jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy” was first published on Jan. 23, following its premiere at Sundance 2022. It isn’t necessary to be a Kanye West fan to appreciate or enjoy the new three-part...
View Article‘After Yang’ Film Review: Colin Farrell Rethinks Humanity Through Robot’s Eyes
If a day ever comes when social media platform Vine decides to mount a comeback, it should quickly and immediately license “After Yang.” Without exactly trying, South Korean–born American filmmaker...
View Article‘Blacklight’ Film Review: Liam Neeson Does That Liam Neeson Thing Again, To...
Since “Taken” in 2008, Liam Neeson has starred in so many movies where he plays a character who protects, rescues, mourns, or avenges his family that it seems somewhat pointless to invest deeply enough...
View Article‘Uncharted’ Film Review: Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg in Breezy Video-Game...
In the tradition of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “The Mummy,” “National Treasure” and “Jumanji,” “Uncharted” taps into a familiar tradition of globe-trotting, roguish adventure, and disguises the...
View Article‘jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy’ Act II Film Review: Doc Series Balances...
“Act II: Purpose,” the second part of filmmakers Coodie and Chike’s documentary “jeen-yuhs,” underscores an important element that shaped Kanye West’s ascent and eventual impact on not just hip-hop but...
View Article‘The Batman’ Film Review: Robert Pattinson Brings Complex Humanity to an Even...
Nothing confers seriousness in a superhero movie more effectively than a protracted running time. (Just ask Zack Snyder, whose DC comics adaptations have each run longer than the previous one.) At 176...
View Article‘jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy’ Act III Film Review: When Kanye Got Too Famous...
“jeen-yuhs” codirectors Coodie and Chike were smart to break up their documentary on Kanye West into three parts, especially where they did: “Act I: Vision” covers the earliest days of a future legend,...
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