Nikki, Wild Dog of the North movie review
This gorgeously shot 1961 Disney movie is half awwww-inspiring romp through evergreen forests, half near-documentary about the Darwinian horrors of the food chain disguised as a kiddie flick.
historical
Shadow of the Vampire movie review: being Nosferatu
What if the dude who played Nosferatu in that great old 1922 silent German horror movie was actually really a vampire? Cool.
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (review)
So what the Coens did with O Brother, Where Art Thou? is this: They transported Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey to this filmic otherworld of theirs, turning what is perhaps the original on-the-road story into a Depression-era fantasia that wants more for you to recognize the clever fun they’re having with filmmaking conventions of the 1930s than whether you know the least thing about ancient literature.
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.
Zachariah movie review
It’s Help! in the Old West, or The Quick and the Deadheads. This “electric western” musical comedy isn’t quite a hero’s journey, more a hero’s trip. It probably helps to be stoned.
The Exorcist, Lost Souls, and Possessed movies review: sympathy for the devil
Do screenwriters bother with characterization or motive for Old Scratch? Rarely — the Prince of Darkness is supposed to just coast on his rep as the Ultimate Bad Dude, and yet those selfsame screenwriters must, by storytelling necessity, declaw him, prevent him from taking full advantage of the hellish forces at his command.
GoodFellas movie review: king of the hill
This is the best mob movie ever made.
Longitude (review)
Here’s a three-hour (four, with commercials) movie about clocks: clocks being built, clocks being taken apart, clocks being talked about, clocks being restored. It should be as boring as watching paint dry, but instead it’s a thrilling intellectual adventure about the genius and obsession that drives both scientific discovery and scholarship.
Gladiator (review)
Is Gladiator an action movie? Is it an historical drama? Is it a sweeping epic? Yes. Like The 13th Warrior, this is a thinking person’s action movie. Like Braveheart, this is a story of a brutal era told with stunning realism. Like Terminator 2, this is a violent movie that indicts our appetite for violence. Like The Matrix, this thrills on both a visceral and cerebral level.
