It’s autumn in rural Vermont, the leaves are changing colors, and all’s not quite right with the world. Edmund Gwenn, best known as Kris Kringle in 1947’s Miracle on 34th Street, plays a retired sea captain who at the start of … Continue reading
In one of Hitchcock’s best films, Jimmy Stewart is a globe-trotting photojournalist temporarily confined to his Greenwich Village apartment by a broken leg. Grace Kelly is his devoted girlfriend, rich, classy, and heavily involved in the fashion industry. She wants … Continue reading
This is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s best films, based on a popular stage play by Frederick Knot, who also wrote the script for the film. Like its even better immediate successor, Rear Window, Dial M for Murder is set almost … Continue reading
The original film (reviewed here) was dumb but still occasionally clever and entertaining. This one is just dumb. In fact, the one clever idea they had was to call it Hot Tub Time Machine 3, but the studio wouldn’t let … Continue reading
Ricky Gervais (who also co-wrote and co-directed) plays a man living on a parallel Earth where everyone is incapable of being other than honest. No lying means no acting, so all movies are documentaries and a movie star is someone … Continue reading
Old friends John Cusack, Craig Robinson, and Rob Corddry, along with Cusack’s young nephew Clark Duke, go to a ski resort that was popular when the three friends were younger. Alas, it has now gone to seed, but when a … Continue reading
On the very night H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) reveals his time machine to his dinner guests, the police come looking for one of them (David Warner), because they’ve just found out that he’s Jack the Ripper. Since McDowell has conveniently … Continue reading
New Jersey married couple Tina Fey and Steve Carrell have each started to worry privately that the romance is going out of their marriage and they’re turning into what a friend of theirs calls his own marital relationship: “really good … Continue reading
Peter Jackson (best known for The Lord of the Rings films) directed this surprisingly touching and understated adaptation of a novel by Alice Sebold. Like Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging it’s told from the viewpoint of a 14-year-old girl, but … Continue reading
I’ve noticed that a lot of this film’s reviews begin the same way, something like, “I was dreading the prospect of having to watch a romantic comedy aimed at teenaged girls,” and then going on to confess how much they … Continue reading