Murphy’s Romance movie review
So wonderful and so rare a film, gentle and warmly humanistic, about two people falling in love depicted plainly, honestly, and — in a way that often eludes Hollywood — with amiable realism.
girls/women
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.
Nancy Drew… Reporter movie review
One of the Warner Bros short features, aimed at young audiences, about the teen-girl detective’s adventures, though she’s cast as a rather interfering little brat. Still, it’s good clean fun for kids.
Desperately Seeking Susan movie review
A new-fashioned screwball comedy combining improbable elements, from ancient Egyptian artifacts to downtown New York chic, with classic conceits like mistaken identity and romantic conundrums.
Bandit Queen movie review
The true story of a modern-day female Robin Hood of India. A powerful and in spots devastating journey through one woman’s conquest of a culture that views women as little more than sexual commodities.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon movie review: arthouse action
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon will make you fall in love with film all over again. Instantly one of the greatest ever adventure movies, it’s also a touching, tender story of love forbidden and denied.
Misery (review)
Annie Wilkes is King’s best psycho and one of the most banally malevolent visions of evil ever depicted onscreen — as played by the extraordinary Kathy Bates, she is a terror of frighteningly everyday proportions. A lonely, abandoned woman living in the Colorado mountains, her greatest solace comes from the romance novels of author Paul Sheldon (James Caan), all of which feature an heroine with the unlikely name of Misery.
Taxi Driver (review)
Was *Taxi Driver* more disturbing, or less disturbing, before its unpleasant truths shifted into the real world?
Chicken Run movie review: rage against the machine
A witty Aardman-brand treat: Chicken Run is a sneaky, cheeky parody of prison and escape movies that nevertheless finds decidedly unsentimental pathos in the predicament of farmyard chickens.
Erin Brockovich (review)
If last Saturday night’s sneak-preview audience is any guide, this could be Julia Roberts’s biggest movie yet. Everything she did onscreen, everything she said either elicited ardent routs of laughter or sent what could only be called worshipful undulations rippling through the crowd. The thrall in which Roberts held these people frightened me. I’m sure execs at Universal Pictures are already peeing in their collective pants with anticipation over this weekend’s box office. Biggest opening ever for a March weekend — you read it here first.
