Exciting, sexy and voyeuristic, 1949’s Bitter Rice (aka Risa Amoro) was a clear move away from the neorealism movement in post war Italy. Just 32 when the film was released, director Giuseppe De Santis gave viewers something to thinking about,…
The dramatic directing debut of British documentarian Morgan Matthews, A Brilliant Young Mind is another addition to the growing list of empathic tales concerning people on the autistic spectrum. For British teenager Nathan Ellis (Asa Butterfield), who struggles to communicate,…
Given that N.W.A. members Dr. Dre and Ice Cube are producers of the film about the group that made them superstars, it’s no surprise that Straight Outta Compton cleans up their story a bit for public consumption. Even so, Compton…
Following the success of Tony Rome, Frank Sinatra returned to the role of hard boiled investigator with The Detective. Based on the 1966 novel of the same name by Roderick Thorp, The Detective is far more serious and adult in…
Dysfunction, dysfunction, dysfunction. To hell with television’s original model of the Ozzie and Harriet clean cut, nuclear family. Showtime’s Shameless has happily put a spotlight on the “worst” kind of parent America has to offer. Frank Gallagher (William H. Macy),…
Visually stunning and undeniably entertaining, The Walk tells the true story of Philippe Petit (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a French street performer who, in 1973, saw a newspaper article about the building of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and…
Based on the popular semi-autobiographical 2004 novel by Jiang Rong, Wolf Totem is yet another beautiful film from director Jean-Jacques Annaud, but unlike his previous efforts such as Quest for Fire, Two Brothers and The Bear, Wolf Totem aims for…
The Bat was billed as horror-thriller-mystery when it arrived in theaters back in 1959, but given the evolution of genres in recent decades, it’s now best thought of as a straight up mystery with some noir flourishes. Agnes Moorehead stars…
British film director Tony Richardson’s decidedly jumpy, loud approach to Tom Jones shocked purists but brought him the 1963 Oscar for Best Director. In his adaptation of John Irving’s The Hotel New Hampshire, that same frenetic style leaves little time…
I have to start off by saying I’ll always wonder what Ant-Man would have been if Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) had stayed in the director’s chair. He was attached to the project for several years, but…