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‘The Last Voyage of the Demeter’ Review: A Dracula Movie To Give You Nightmares
On a dank, dreary and dismal night in 1897, a chartered Russian tanker called the Demeter left Romania for England with an under-staffed crew, its only cargo a series of coffins in the shape of wooden...
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‘Retribution’ Review: Liam Neeson’s Family Is In Danger Yet Again
Time for a career re-think, or at least a change of pace, for Liam Neeson. Once a powerful, appealing and versatile stage actor in both London and New York (I’ll never forget his galvanizing portrayal...
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‘Golda’ Review: Helen Mirren In A Show-Off Acting Experiment
Dame Helen Mirren is a distinguished, resplendent, versatile and deservedly revered British star whose relentless courage and self-assurance have obviously convinced her she can play any role she so...
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‘The Good Mother’ Review: Hilary Swank Can’t Save This Routine Crime Thriller
Two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank fritters away her time in the routine crime thriller The Good Mother, playing Marissa Bennings, a heavy-drinking, chain-smoking, disaster-prone journalist with...
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Rex Reed’s Top Picks from the 2023 Toronto Film Festival
The gloom and doom persistently pumped out of Hollywood in the middle of the Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA strikes cast a predictably shadowy pall over the just-ended 48th Toronto International Film...
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‘Fair Play’ Left a Nasty Taste in My Mouth
A love and revenge drama set in the cutthroat world of high finance, Fair Play is a powerful and disturbing feature debut film by writer-director Chloe Domont that is being labeled “a Wall Street for...
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‘Foe’ Is a 1-Star, Deadly Bore, Rambling Heap of Junk
One door closes, another one opens. No sooner did I sign off on the unexpected cornucopia of riches that comprised two weeks of the Toronto International Film Festival when two weeks of the smaller,...
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‘The Royal Hotel’: Why Make This Movie at All?
In the Australian film The Royal Hotel, Liv and Hannah, two Canadian girls looking for kicks while backpacking Down Under, run out of money in a remote mining town and take jobs as bartenders in a...
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Everyone’s Ignoring ‘The Winter House’ But This Film Deserves a Closer Look
Lili Taylor is another in a long list of first-rate actors who has inexplicably eluded stardom in favor of good work in solid but overlooked films and plays that deserved more attention than they got....
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‘Pain Hustlers’ Is a Stunning Take on Capitalism in Healthcare
After making a name for himself directing four money-making Harry Potter films, British wunderkind David Yates decided it was time to leave Hogwarts magic behind and change the pace with a grittier...
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If There’s Any Justice, ‘NYAD’ Will Be Remembered When Awards Season Rolls...
Fresh from various film festival victories and still ringing with applause, NYAD arrives at last on both streaming platforms and the commercial screen, as splendid and captivating as ever. It’s the...
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Martin Scorsese’s Strengths Seem Wasted in ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’
Clocking in at close to four hours, Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese’s epic film about the evil massacre of the Osage Indians by greedy white racist capitalists in the 1920s, is...
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Meg Ryan and David Duchovny Are Still Appealing. Their New Movie Is Not.
It’s been years since either Meg Ryan or David Duchovny appeared in a feature film, but now that they’re back, co-starring in a two-hander called What Happens Later, it’s fairly obvious that neither...
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Sofia Coppola’s Adolescent, Gushing, Empty-Headed ‘Priscilla’ Sugarcoats Elvis
Francis Ford Coppola’s daughter Sofia is a slick writer-director who specializes in lavishly decorated, empty-headed biopics about lavishly decorated, empty-headed people, i.e. Marie Antoinette and...
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‘Rumble Through the Dark’ Is Two Hours of Savagery With Nothing New to Say
Aaron Eckhart, handsome and versatile leading man who has played everything from a corrupt tobacco lobbyist to tough Marines and sexy lovers in every kind of movie from Thank You For Smoking to Erin...
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‘At the Gates’ Is a Noble Film That Forces You to Think
At a time when the plight of illegal immigrants pouring into the U.S. to escape world tyranny and seek a better life for their children is a central issue dominating the headlines, At the Gates could...
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A ‘Thanksgiving’ Horror Movie Is Exactly the Hack Job You’d Expect
There’s a horror movie to commemorate every holiday. Halloween heads the list, followed by Christmas (Santa Claus vampires?), but no tradition remains unscathed (brain-eating zombies on Valentine’s...
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Joaquin Phoenix Borders on Catatonic in ‘Napoleon’
Another in a long list of flawed and boring movies about the Emperor of France, I could hardly sit through Ridley Scott’s Napoleon with my eyes open. I prefer both the classic 1927 silent film by Abel...
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You Can’t Take Your Eyes Off Gael García Bernal in ‘Cassandro’
From Mexico, Cassandro is a fresh, unusual and highly entertaining film about the rarefied world of exotic Mexican wrestlers called “exoticos,” flamboyant fellows who entertain masses of fans by...
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Bradley Cooper’s ‘Maestro’ Is a Masterpiece
Maestro is the movie of the year. Amendment: not to slight the amazing Oppenheimer, make that one of the two best films of the year. But Bradley Cooper’s warts-and-all biopic about volatile...
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