Reviews

M. Night Shyamalan hit a pop culture nerve with “Unbreakable.”

Few filmmakers took comic book movies seriously back in 2000. An even smaller group dropped these figures into the real …
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Here we go again.

It’s easy to watch “The Punisher” season two and see more Christianity bashing out of Hollywood. The major villain is a man of faith, a monster …
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Hollywood raged against both President George W. Bush and the Iraq War for years until studios realized no one wanted to see more movies on the subject.

Think commercial duds …
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There are a lot of horror films about cults, and with good reason.

We’re afraid of what we don’t understand, and it’s hard to understand why a group of otherwise …
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American remakes of foreign films get a bad rap, often for good reason.

Some Hollywood versions strip away what made the source material sparkle. “The Upside” does something similar to the …
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Could the modern age ever become so dark, so medieval, that mankind might forget say Copernicus, the Renaissance-era Pole who bravely put the Sun and not the Earth at the …
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Low-budget movies can cut plenty of corners and still entertain. 

“Intensive Care” falls awkwardly into that camp, with some blockbuster-sized reservations.

It’s shrewd enough not to overstay its welcome, clocking …
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The protagonist in director Jen McGowan’s “Rust Creek” is an empowered, resourceful young woman.

We see that in the way she deals with adversity and constantly improvises to save her …
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In Brian De Palma’s “Carlito’s Way,” Al Pacino plays the “JP Morgan of the smack business.”

Carlito Brigante has been a criminal for 25 years and has spent five years …
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When Robert Altman died on November 20, 2006, I was a few hours away from teaching a class on his life and works.

A number of students called me that …
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