Whether it’s delving into the mysteries of human DNA or those of the perfect lasagna, the series doesn’t fail to charm.
The elegantly underplayed performances ensure that the film never succumbs to melodrama.
Criterion’s Blu-ray is a loving tribute to the tender approach that was taken toward the adaptation of Kemp Powers’s one-act play.
The film understands how its major cultural figures navigated a political minefield, while never taking its eyes off of them as people.
Kino offers a sturdy transfer of Ashby’s overlooked and still quite volatile feature film debut.
The film is a slow, directionless anti-thriller that never manages to build tension or establish any stakes.
Right out of the gate, the film only sees a kind of blunt irony in this blurring of her public and private selves.
The film suggests a throwback to one of those old Hollywood moonshots of thorny romance and life-or-death adventure.
This moody, under-seen, incredibly sexy romantic noir, a highpoint for its superb cast, receives a beautiful, appropriately reverent restoration.
Its second season is no more or less disappointing than a grand seduction that concludes with a minute-long roll in the hay.
It isn’t a sophisticated comedy by any means, but its overall lightheartedness manages to save it from becoming completely dull.
The “male gaze” that often despicably and hypocritically surfaces in these kinds of films is pointedly absent throughout.
Far more frustrating than the film’s banally conventional plot structure is its characters’ lack of depth.
Payne’s lovely, resonant fifth film does the hula on a lonely island of imminent death and wasted life.
The Descendants is unassumingly superb, and it’s sure to clinch a whole lot of Oscar nominations. Indeed, it’s a Clooney.
On the basis of About Schmidt, you’d think Alexander Payne had a problem dealing with grief.
Director Mark Brokaw, making an ill-advised leap from stage to screen, never finds a worthy tone for the film.
The film’s meticulously composed cinematography proves almost as inert as its star’s grimacing tough-guy routine.
How desperate was Hollywood in 1970? It let Hal Ashby make The Landlord, a crazed, profane racial satire written by negroes.
There also isn’t a moment when The Good German’s artifice isn’t as depressingly hollow as a spent bullet casing.