The Passion of the Christ
A gutsy portrayal of a well-known story. But the passion has to come from you: the movie has little of its own.
Based on a Novel
Films based on a novel or series of novels
We Need to Talk About Kevin
A movie where story and performance collide. As unsettling as we always knew Tilda Swinton could be.
Sleepy Hollow: High Homage
An underappreciated throwback movie. Horrific, cheesy, and sometimes completely beautiful.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula: Beauty with the Beast
As haunting and gorgeous and cluttered as every vampire tale put together.
The Man Who Laughs
Veidt becomes the face of Expressionism: this is dramatic self-harm on a scale that defines greatness.
Enemy Explained
An analysis of Villeneuve’s dreamy horror film. Not for the faint, the arachnophobic, or the easily confused.
Woman in the Dunes (Suna no Onna)
You meet Woman in the Dunes rather than watch it, and when you do, the result is a series of sensations that begin to represent yourself to you.
Dr. Strangelove
By employing, perverting, and redirecting the rules of wartime filmmaking to primary targets of his own design, Kubrick creates an encompassing and indispensable work of satire, penetrating as Orwell, snide as Vonnegut, enigmatic as Heller.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
If Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was a tour of fantasy-land (who else thought their feelings seemed stuffed with baubles like gift-bags from a theme park?), The Chamber of Secrets is like accidentally wandering into the maintenance closet. Something is disenchanted by it, and I can think of no harsher criticism, to call something squinty that once was wide-eyed.
Bambi
The world of Bambi is so beautiful and passively hostile that you can’t help but love it a lot. And grow up a little.
Annihilation: Smart Movies Have it Rough
The structure of its symbols is so admirable that Annihilation will make you forget the flaws in its execution. Mainstream horror with an intellectual twist.
Mary Poppins Returns
When Mary Poppins pops out on stage in stockings and Mia Wallace hair I was reminded of some Mary Poppins-themed miniskirt ensembles I saw in a shop window in Disney Springs. From then on, I was half-afraid of the Banks home staging a rendition of the sexy maid porno situation. I’m fairly certain Andrews’ version would have scoffed the scanty jollity of this number in particular. I’m positive that author P.L. Travers would have wept.
True Grit (2010)
The Western is a myth of values. True Grit is a story that appreciates these values without necessarily approving of them. This is a film made in the spirit of a long tradition, which is surprising coming from the usually more provocative Coen Brothers. But its subtle changes should not be ignored – they contain all its secret truths, and theirs.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Cuarón colludes with us like one of Harry’s helpful army of British character actors whispering in our ear in a language we understand without knowing, or a clever dad with a dark and silly secret. This is the first Harry Potter film that feels like an open book. It’s the best teen film ever made.
The Man Who Invented Christmas
A Christmas Carol is such a tired tale by now that the first task of this new film should have been to make old hat seem tailored for the first time. But as Dickens picks up well-known artifices of his story off the street, you become infected by that terribly un-jolly feeling that this is one of those movies – one in which random people will speak full Dickensian quotes for the good author to overhear and jot down, in which everyone he meets has a name that will go into one of his stories.
Raging Bull
A tale of anger so well-told it becomes mythic: cinema’s perfect anthem to self-destruction.
Fight Club
The aspect of rebellion in Fight Club makes it the anthem of a cinematic generation, who may not understand it at all. Remember, “the first rule of fight club is that you do not talk about fight club.” If you argued about its philosophy, its meaning, its impact, its significance, the movie would punch you in the nose.
Peter Rabbit (2018)
Peter Rabbit (2018) is awkward. It’s a heap of a film, and not at all because it’s different. Even the best satire is stuffed with sincerity, like a rabbit full of radishes he’s insisting just up and disappeared. Without it, there’s nothing but smugness.
The Disaster Artist
Franco performs Tommy with affectionate realism but directs him with too much ambiguous charity, as though The Disaster Artist is the film in which Wiseau finally gets to be the hero, even if no one can quite figure out why.
The Thing (1982)
In this film, the divisions that we value so much, out of which we create our sense of individuality, will victimize us to a terrifying monster of collectivity. The Thing absorbs and unifies life where suspicious and divided people destroy it. This is Invasion of the Body Snatchers accelerated to universality.
Carrie (1976)
Beneath its skin, this film is really a coming of age tale. Can you see how horrifying that makes it?
First Man
Chazelle takes us to space and still thinks the most important things are the ones we left behind. The best film of 2018.
The Godfather Part II
The film is essentially about how Michael has failed to be his father, to garner real respect, and even to be truly Italian. The failure is a well-made sequel but was it necessary? It distorts the whole picture, as though Vito Corleone died for nothing.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
A film with tasty new charm, that you can only find if you don’t expect it to be the same charm you already ate.
Paddington 2
We’re too full of wonderment to make it back around to sarcasm, which is just cynicism in a more thoughtful form. Paddington 2 is like its main character. It doesn’t know how else to view the world but genuinely.
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Here’s a tribute to the old “road to …” pictures. It might be the best of them, and no better than them.
The Insignificance of Language in It (2017)
It is a movie with no individual voice and, appropriately enough, it treats language as an impediment to be renounced. Language in It is either an echo or agent of fear. The bullies and auxiliary villains perceive language as intractable from their dominance.
The Thing (2011)
The Thing’s lack of a stable form worked for Carpenter, who was able to squeeze a pure and palpable uncertainty out of never knowing who or what the Thing exactly was. But in Heijningen’s version, it seems to be more a matter of horror tradition than the transcription of a bold idea.
Alice Through the Looking Glass
A nauseating movie. I’d say it was hedonistic but that requires it to be pleasurable at some point.