Noel Murray

In the battle of the classic Hollywood Christmas movies, It's A Wonderful Life feels charmingly ancient, fixed in an early-20th-century America that scarcely anyone today remembers first-hand. Miracle On 34th Street feels more modern, with slangy dialogue and naturalistic asides, and a general awareness of how Christmas has become about the intertwined stresses of shopping and selling.

The brilliance of Knightriders—and it is a brilliant film, even though no one paid it much attention when it was released in 1981—is that Romero clearly identifies with King William, yet doesn’t lionize him.

In spite of the material's thinness, and even though Carradine and Keitel look ridiculous sporting fancy duds while speaking bodice-ripper dialogue in flat American accents, The Duellists endures as a diverting action potboiler.

There's been a proliferation of "globalization sucks" documentaries over the past couple of years, but few have been as blunt as Black Gold.

The superhero stuff is often unintentionally silly, but again, Sayles shapes a catchy premise into a subtler piece, using Morton's "alien" status as a way of asking who deserves to be called an outsider in a country born of outsiders.

This is studio-system product at its juiciest and most sophisticated, full of insights into the mess behind the art.

Someone as attuned as Varda to the quality of an image should know that a flat, disposable medium like video makes images harder to internalize.

Fast-paced, and entertaining in a soapy way, but plot demands require almost all of the dialogue to be flatly descriptive.

A comedy of sorts, though to Jacobs' credit, he doesn't aim for cheap laughs.

Nods at objectivity but announces its activist intentions throughout.

If a middle-American teenager in the late 1980s wanted to see good-looking young folks build a giant ramp in their backyard and do spectacular mid-air twists, then the local video store could satisfy that fantasy, too.

Looks and sounds better than the average indie film debut.

It's a sports film unlike any other, and a political film that makes the personal profound.

The movie’s only intermittently successful at blurring the lines between art and life. But it’s a sincerely felt experiment, and it has spirit.

Badham and company elide a lot of technical details of hacking, but the basics of the nascent computer culture still feel spot-on, right down to the body type and personalities of Eddie Deezen and Maury Chaykin, who play two of Broderick's techno-literate confederates (and work in Seattle, no less). More important is how WarGames plays up the contrast between teenagers—rebellious on the surface but conformist by nature—with a cynical adult world that has become convinced that nuclear annihilation might not be so bad.

The Bridesmaid goes slack at times, as it follows multiple Magimel family subplots, but as always, Chabrol stages everything with an elegant economy, moving the camera in short bursts that direct the eye but don't distract. Still, the movie would fail completely if not for the dynamic between the two leads.

Twins Of Evil, like the best of Hammer, is about entering a world of castles, creatures, and torch-wielding mobs, all a little darker and more colorful than expected.

Opens with a montage of thrilling clips from its predecessor, then hits all the same notes, harder and duller.

The story starts at a low boil and quickly heats up, but the problem with Tell No One--a common problem with contemporary pulp literature--is that at some point, all the narrative's intriguing questions resolve with prosaic answers, delivered in long, convoluted speeches by people wielding guns.

Seems too subtle at times and too obvious at others, but Hamer strings together pieces of conversation and layers of voyeurism (everybody in the movie is watching somebody) into a moving study of the perils of presumption.

If modern art-lovers want to understand what the Jack Smith experience was like, Jordan's documentary may be their best chance.

For those who can’t abide conventional biopics, here’s a viable alternative: A Room And A Half, a fantastical, imaginative depiction of the life of Nobel-winning Russian poet Joseph Brodsky.

Together, Ebert and Meyer produced an unhinged spoof of soapy melodramas and hippie iconography, so over-the-top in its violence and libertine sexuality that no one in 1970 quite knew what to make of it.

The story’s many advances and reversals can be hard to follow at times, but this isn’t really a movie where plot is paramount. Everything boils down to the action, and what that action means.

While it isn't as brilliant as his The Bridge On The River Kwai or Lawrence Of Arabia, Lean's final film is just as meticulously designed, because more than any other filmmaker of his era, he understood how the right hat could say as much about a character —and a society—as any line of dialogue.

This is an exciting, sweeping vision of American life, which treats crime like the ultimate small business, crushed by the machinations of the truly powerful.

Makes effective drama, but ultimately it's just an outrage machine, designed to get the viewer fired up by the sight of warring ideologues preaching to their own.

Lane approaches New York’s unbalanced, inhumane economy the same way he approaches filmmaking: by putting a new frame around familiar sights, and forcing the audience to reconsider them.

Evergreen suffers from creeping indie-itis, epitomized by the low-light digital video and droning electric-guitar soundtrack, but its biggest weakness lies in Zentelis' apparent fear of surprise.

Alfred Hitchcock's early films run the gamut from not-bad to dreary, but they're mainly remarkable for how Hitchcockian they are.

To The Limit is full of a lot of talk about "risk" and "dreams" and "making the impossible possible," and Danquart's stabs at making this an inspirational tale can be a little exhausting.

Overly conventional as a documentary, but it's inspiring as a rebuttal to the declining state of the world at large. It's encouraging to know that the endurance of institutions like marriage and family could hold the key to keeping civilization intact.

The filmmaker self-consciously borrows from dozens of sources, including radio dramas, Our Gang shorts, hygiene films, school plays, stag pictures, Universal horror, ethnographic documentaries, and the indie weirdness of John Waters and David Lynch.

García apparently prefers ambiguity, implying all sorts of heavy backstory for each of his leads but leaving the details vague, and he lets his actresses carry the baggage in their performances alone.

For all its documentary-style urgency, Private often feels forced.

Moreau is magnetic as the wise-but-neurotic scribe, though the same can't be said of Demarigny, whose timid portrayal of a reverent fanboy sucks the energy out of most of his scenes. Dayan's direction is even more problematic.

La Petite Lili isn't conventional or crowd-pleasing enough to appeal to audiences who like their foreign films safely sentimental, but it's also not daring enough for those who expect art to hurt a little.

Raises the question of whether Krasinski made this movie because he really loves Wallace’s work, or because just he wanted to show Hollywood that the loveable doof from The Office can actually act.

Though Robbins acts a little stiff, Morton remains stunning throughout, playing a mixture of her wide-eyed, deeply sensitive characters from "Morvern Callar" and "Minority Report." She suggests worlds within worlds.

Hepburn's blend of pluckiness and self-pity and Arkin's cool cunning give Wait Until Dark emotional weight, but their final tussle is what most fans of the film remember.

A Prophet has been compared to American TV series like "Oz" for its episodic plot and large cast, but it’s more like a Gallic "Goodfellas": thoroughly absorbing, exciting, even poetic. It’s a full evening’s entertainment.

Though the result is too slow and curious, with a weak lead performance by the writer-director, The Tenant's tone of abstracted anxiety is distinctive, and its central message, that the obnoxious define the world for everyone else, provides another tile in Polanski's career mosaic of paranoia and power brokerage.

The gut-churningly nasty Pusher III practically justifies the whole series, as it digs deep into the angst of a drug kingpin—a junkie himself—nagged by a thousand little business details and taunted by all the young, carefree libertines he sees enjoying themselves at his drug dens.

The family's few lines of dialogue are so integral to advancing the story that they may well have been scripted, but it's not that important whether The Story Of The Weeping Camel is more fiction than objective ethnography. If anything, the contrast between what's real and what may have been faked only adds to the tension between the natural world and encroaching modernism.

From the heroes’ complicated planning to the story’s cruel twist ending, The Killing illustrates how human beings have a bad habit of getting in their own way.

One of the first and still among the best of the '30s screwball comedies, My Man Godfrey serves up absurdist romance and light social commentary in a fizzy mix that benefits from director Gregory La Cava's willingness to indulge improvisation, a trait he acquired from friend and frequent collaborator W.C. Fields.

Temple introduces viewers to Strummer the punster, Strummer the womanizer, and Strummer the poseur, whom his mates could only really talk to when no one else was around.

From the jargon-heavy dialogue to the loving shots of tricked-out autos, Corvette Summer is heaven for people who love hot wheels.

Hard-to-follow action and a silly, inconsistent tone work against the film, but Hope's reluctant can-do attitude and wry comments keep the energy level up.

The drama feels factory-cut and shrink-wrapped, with each of three kids' stories following predictably twisty paths to ironically hopeful conclusions.

What's so remarkable about the movie is how matter-of-fact it is.

For the most part, Willmott succeeds thrillingly.

Ultimately, Cocaine Cowboys' lesson isn't that crime doesn't pay, but that it maybe pays too well.

It's hard to explain exactly why Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima is so much better than its companion World War II film "Flags Of Our Fathers," except to say that Flags tries too hard to emphasize the ironies of selling a war, while Letters deals with the ins and outs of the war itself.

The outsider road picture Gypsy 83 means well, but writer-director Todd Stephens can't keep his aesthetic out of the way.

Di Florio loses her grip on Liuzzo's story whenever she lapses into generalities. But when Di Florio gets into the specifics of her subject's legacy, Home Of The Brave stands out as both relevant and moving.

Escape From L.A. is a mild letdown. It repeats the basic plot of the original, with a lighter tone, cheaper-looking (yet actually more expensive) special effects, and a grunge soundtrack.

As for its quality as an actual movie, well, The Jazz Singer is hardly great, but it provides solid melodrama and a valuable look at the ethnic stereotypes of early-20th-century entertainment.

Frequently funny, for those who can stomach it.

This is a smart, melancholy crime picture, which takes its cues from the title of the perverse old standard Christensen plays on her stereo at night: “You Always Hurt The One You Love.”

Maniac Cop is heavier on the goofery than the relevance.

Give Fitzgerald credit for ambition and good intentions, but for all its truth-to-power saber-rattling, 3 Needles is distressingly dim.

Wings is primarily a grand spectacle, with an ingenious piece of visual storytelling rolling along every few minutes.

Becomes hard going the longer Baur stretches out the parade of narcissists, all spouting received wisdom, cultural clichés, and bad poetry.

A little too neat, and self-consciously vague at the end. But it's fascinating to observe and try to interpret François' mysterious smile as she eyes her boss.

Great World Of Sound is painfully specific about the music-scouting grind.

Miike has served up some of the most dumbfounding images in contemporary cinema.

In its overt attempts to balance high-spirited spy adventure with more realistic acting and actio--conveying the realities of government-sponsored murde--Casino Royale is a step in the right direction for the Bond franchise. But it's a small, tentative step.

The characters Lehmann and company use as generational mouthpieces bear no relation to any people who have ever existed, and they barely work as parody.

A respectable enough little ghost story, but it loses a lot of sparkle by being similar to such other guy-talks-to-the-dead thrillers as "The Sixth Sense" and "Ghost Town."

In that way, Jarvis is a lot like Arnold: an artist who knows the steps, but doesn't yet have all the moves.

Weaver's overacting and Dorfman's bold-faced dialogue oversell the scenario. Only Kingsley's sly turn gives Death And The Maiden any real feeling of disquiet.

Brutal but hugely entertaining.

From the outset, the director lets us know that this won’t be some sensationalistic crime story. Close-Up is more about the power of images, and how what’s on the screen at any given moment can hold our attention completely, even if it has nothing to do with “the story.”

Although longer and more complex than Gimli, thanks to a fine script by Maddin and George Toles, Careful is equally claustrophobic. The director's continued use of minimal lighting, deliberately phony-looking studio sets, and sterile overdubs perpetuates a feeling of blatant manufacture which undercuts any disturbing themes.

Milestone’s visual style lacks the flourish of Wellman’s Wings, but it’s no less explicit, as the camera pans across battlefields where dismembered body parts hang from barbed wire.

Though the jury in 12 Angry Men reaches a verdict, neither Rose nor Lumet definitively state whether they're "right." The point—as Lumet well knows—is that when it comes to making sense of a picture, a lot depends on the framing.

There's something a little shallow about contrasting ungrateful German kids with their respectful Japanese counterparts and presuming the cultural differences are so cut-and-dried.

Up to the last five minutes, Poison Friends stays true to that heady, idealistic-to-a-fault world of academia.

Broderick, Alda, and Madsen are all fine--and Alda has some poignant moments as he realizes the implications of his forgetfulness--but their presence in a movie like this reaffirms its conventionality.

Jellyfish is the kind of film that will ring true for some viewers, while striking others as too slight and precious.

Reality Bites embodied seemingly every odious post-Nirvana media trend. The title alone was laughably faux-hip, and the movie's portrait of slackerdom—limply enacted by Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Steve Zahn, and Janeane Garofalo—was both broad and shallow...No one acknowledges the obvious—that a heinous idea got even worse when Stiller signed on to direct.

Aside from a smattering of irony and a resolution for one of the storylines, the security cameras aren't really threaded into Look's essential purpose. If the idea is that we're always being watched, why does it seem that in this movie, no one's really paying attention?

The film is also valuable for raising awareness about Leth, whose work hasn't been as widely recognized as that of his European contemporaries, but who now makes an impressive case for his skills, five times over.

Lively, impassioned, well-structured documentary.

It's a straightforward, relatively style-free piece, primarily of interest to those who want to hear Zizek's pronouncements. But what distinguishes the film is Zizek's peculiar self-awareness, which borders on paranoia

Conceptually, Lust, Caution has been thoroughly thought-through, down to every lipstick stain Wei leaves on her teacups.

More propaganda than cinema, and at an hour and a half, its exhaustiveness diminishes its impact. But Epstein anchors the film nicely with her own pregnancy, which occurs while the documentary is in production and comes to an unexpected conclusion before shooting ends.

De Oliveira wraps A Talking Picture with a simultaneous introduction and farewell--a bold curtain-dropper that's either a bleak joke or an imprecisely controlled scream of rage.

Eddie And The Cruisers is a hodgepodge of seemingly unmarketable ingredients: a complicated flashback structure, oblique nods to Elvis Presley conspiracy theories and The Beach Boys’ unreleased opus Smile, and anachronistic Bruce Springsteen-style frat-rock.

The problem with Desert Wind is that Kohler takes everything at face value. Wouldn't it have been more useful to make this trip the centerpiece of a longer documentary that follows the men before Tunisia and, more importantly, after?

Ayer gets lost in a maze of ironies, and has to bulldoze his way to an exit. For a while, Harsh Times is thrillingly hard to predict. By the end, it becomes all too easy.

The result is either one of the most self-indulgent vanity projects in the history of the Hollywood star system, or a rare revealing look at a distinguished actor who usually keeps his real self out of the spotlight.

The film seems even more one-note when compared to the recent indie feature "Chop Shop," which also follows young immigrant hustlers in NYC, yet takes the time to provide a fuller picture of the city and its opportunities. Zalla prefers to wallow in the dead-end, an approach that's initially powerful, then numbing.

The first full flowering of the De Palma style, the film cleverly uses split-screens and cross-cutting to string the audience along while heightening the emotions of any given scene nearly to the point of parody. The movie is playful and provocative -- at once one of the scariest and funniest horror movies of the '70s. [21 Oct 2018, p.E7]

Primarily though, the film works as a tour de force for McHattie--a veteran character actor making the most of his character’s long, fluid monologues--and as a sly commentary on journalistic responsibility.

What this Singing Detective really needed was to be reworked top to bottom, preferably by a writer fleeing some demons of his own.

Every scene of The Killing Fields (and every participant in its making) is in service of showing how abruptly a seemingly safe and vital individual can have everything essential stripped away.

Neither pro- nor anti-war; it’s a somber study of perpetually unsettled lives.

This is pure, thick hokum. It’s also utterly absorbing, from start to finish.

It's no "trip through the dark to appreciate the light." It's a nightmare from start to finish.

It's so rare these days to see a documentary that aspires to be cinematic that Beyond Hatred may seem at first to be slightly better than it is.

A powerhouse soundtrack–with the songs deployed slyly, as comment and foreshadowing–and a stunning ending balance the copious nudity and slapstick raunch which have led some to dismiss The Last American Virgin as distasteful. Really, the film's frankness makes it more honest than its dreamy-eyed descendants; even the shallow treatment of girls captures the point of view of a luckless teenage boy.

By the time Feuerzeig gets to his final shot--an artful portrait of Johnston's parents, with their son looming over them like a curse--he's emerged with the most harrowing and aesthetically keen portrait of madness and artistic inspiration since "Crumb."

Most of the last hour of Memorial Day feels like a retread at least, and horribly exploitative at worst.

After two hours of dazzlingly fantastical images and stomach-turning gore, del Toro winds around, and finds his story's center.

Beautifully shot and crisply edited to emphasize the Mass Games' pageantry, but amid the synchronized blocks of performers, Gordon singles out the cranky coaches and giggling schoolgirls, subtly emphasizing how the individual endures even when she's trying hard not to.

It's a rare moment when the STORY makes the point, not the speeches.

Television tends to trump movies when it comes to staging richly detailed cop dramas, but David Mamet’s 1991 film Homicide is the rare big-screen policier that can stand up to The Shield, The Wire, Hill Street Blues, and Homicide: Life On The Street.

Barking Dogs Never Bite is uneven, unnecessarily provocative, and exhausts its central premise long before the closing credits, but it’s invigorating to watch regardless. After all, Bong is just doing what New Wave artists do: experimenting, breaking rules, showing off.

Palminteri and screenwriter David Hubbard desperately want the crazy misfits in their movie to move the audience, but they're all too cracked to inspire empathy. There's no holiday magic, just famous faces playing people who don't exist.

While Winged Migration asks the audience to empathize with birds, Fly Away Home asks us to take a closer look at the people who love them, and to understand what gives their lives meaning.

The Last Unicorn is notable because author Peter S. Beagle adapted his own popular 1968 novel, and made sure that his philosophical ruminations on myth, truth, and illusion remained integral to the plot.

As is the norm for Ritchie, Rocknrolla is also too long, too coolly violent, and too populated by characters who all talk like they've been reading the same pulp novelist.

Battle In Heaven is like a serious of artful photographs, except that Reygadas also moves the camera in astonishing and unusual ways, swooping around the conventional x- and y-axes while teasing the audience with what he's about to show. He's got an astonishing technique. Here's hoping that someday he'll use it to make a movie.

What Goes Up has a one-of-a-kind character in Coogan, a cynic with a savior complex, who lies partly out of convenience, and partly because he knows--as Glatzer and Lawson know--that even a messy story can still inspire.

Burns has continued to cram one-dimensional characters into thinly plotted comedy-dramas, hoping to re-impress moviegoers with his aloof leading-man charm and faux-natural, trying-too-hard-to-be-funny dialogue.

ShowBusiness is a smart, highly entertaining piece of cinema-reportage, but it never quite rises to the level of penetrating insight or emotional catharsis.

The Wraith’s plot is predictable and its genre nods skimpy (primarily limited to The Mystery Racer’s ability to resurrect himself after crashes), but Marvin directs with real energy and wit.

Just when the seemingly endless scenes of Johansson's nagging threaten to sink Match Point for good, the movie becomes the thriller that early reports promised.

Still, after an hour and a half of exquisite photography and mushy action, audiences may well ask the unspoken question that plays across the faces of the Rolling Family clan right before the closing credits. Was it worth it?

Disturbing The Universe doesn’t mix it up enough.

An ambitious nostalgia piece with a broad emotional palette.

Given the complexity of this case and of the Satmar/Zionist feud, the documentary would've benefited from some dryly expert talking heads and a more conventional structure.

The story of Control's creation is the story of great potential, squandered. Joy Division fans should be able to relate.

Guttenberg adapts James Kirkwood Jr.'s humanist black comedy -- and drains all the recognizable humanity out of it, turning it into a morose, unlikable reflection of its sad-sack lead character.

Both Kong and Mechani-Kong look unimpressive, with none of the weird grandeur of the classic Japanese kaiju.

Regular Lovers isn't a folly-of-youth story that aches with emotion, like "Au Revoir," "Les Enfants" or "The Squid And The Whale." It's drier, and simpler.

Animal Kingdom joins in the tradition of brutally unsentimental Australian crime dramas like "The Boys," in which the stakes are low, except to the people staring down the barrel of a gun.

Akin divides The Edge Of Heaven into thirds, and ends the first two sections with emotionally devastating scenes of violence, before easing into a third section that deals with the repercussions and lessons learned.

Jeff Malmberg's documentary Marwencol is at its best when it focuses on Hogancamp's little world, and lets the artist walk the viewer through his town's increasingly dense mythology.

While Saints And Sinners will strike some as a refreshingly even-toned social study, it's also a documentary heavy on talking heads and low on real drama. It's beautifully shot and deeply felt, but, for the most part, hearing a description of the film is as good as watching it.

With Mysterious Skin, Araki burrowed into the hearts and minds of his audience, looking to provide his viewers with Neil and Brian’s deeper understanding of how to piece together a fractured life, then go looking for the fragments that are still buried deep.

The Tony Scott version of Tarantino comes out vulgar; the graphic violence and profanity-laced posturing represent everything that the wannabes soon used to exhaust audiences. Nevertheless, True Romance contains so many unforgettable moments.

Wagner and company fail to follow Langella's primary rule of storytelling: "Follow the characters around until they do something interesting."

The lack of a splashy style puts the tales of the rescued and their rescuers properly at the center, but whether viewers connect will depend in part on how saturated they are with Holocaust lore.

Five Easy Pieces is the very definition of a character study, and one of the best American cinema has produced.

Kim weaves these clichés into effectively nerve-wracking setpieces, though between the jumps, A Tale Of Two Sisters becomes mired in ponderous melodrama.