Catch a Fire (review)

It’s South Africa in 1980, and boy, does it burn to see this true tale of torture and oppression, of radicalization and rebellion from a regime so malevolent, even pathological, play like an object lesson for us today here in the United States.

Running with Scissors (review)

It’s movies like this one that make me wanna hang up my hat as a critic, because I just can’t figure out what’s wrong with it.

Flags of Our Fathers (review)

Half bitter and harsh, half propagandistic and hagiographic, this is the love child of ‘Saving Private Ryan’ and ‘Pearl Harbor,’ too sentimental to be intellectually satisfying but too tart to serve as melodrama.

Infamous (review)

This is one of the best films of 2006 so far, and, ironic as it may sound, will be even better appreciated by those who also loved last year’s film.

Man of the Year (review)

Lacks all conviction in its would-be insurgent attitudes and lacks any courage in seeing through to a tough conclusion the political realities it pretends to attack.

The Departed movie review: mean streets of Boston

This is the smartest kind of spectacular that an international remake can be: it picks up the clever threads of story from its source material and weaves them into another world in such a way that it’s hard to see how they didn’t spring from that world in the first place.