Road to Perdition movie review: pulp fiction

There’s not a thing that isn’t hauntingly, quietly electrifying about this, the first truly grown-up comic book movie. Fans of the medium have known for years that the form had no trouble being Important, but the film industry (though perhaps not all filmmakers themselves) has stubbornly insisted on treating comic adaptations as juvenile.

Double Indemnity (review)

In the wee hours of July 16, 1938, an insurance salesman Walter Neff sits down at a dictation machine in the offices of Pacific All-Risk in Los Angeles to record a confession. That guy Dietrichson, who died mysteriously? Neff killed him.

In the Heat of the Night (review)

Maybe it’s an indication of some slight social progress, or just a marker of how fine a film this is, that In the Heat of the Night also works as a crime-fighting story in a tradition as old as the Sherlock Holmes tales and as new as The X-Files.

Casablanca (review)

I’d never seen Casablanca before — sure, bits and pieces here and there while channel surfing, but not as much as I thought I’d seen. And watching it at last was like a revelation. This is the ultimate movie. This is the purpose for which Hollywood invented itself. This is how good a film can be.