Motherless Brooklyn Review: One Gumshoe Short of a Pair
Film noir can be a tough sell in modern cinema. Motherless Brooklyn seems intent on displaying all the reasons why it doesn’t work, but that doesn’t mean it’s a total waste of 144 minutes.
Film noir can be a tough sell in modern cinema. Motherless Brooklyn seems intent on displaying all the reasons why it doesn’t work, but that doesn’t mean it’s a total waste of 144 minutes.
Whirlpool reunites Gene Tierney with director Otto Preminger, but despite fine performances and stylish direction, this intriguing yet overblown tale of psychological manipulation and murder can’t match the pair’s prev...
A triumph for director William Wyler, The Letter blends drama, intrigue, and impeccable craftsmanship as it chronicles the aftermath of a crime of passion. A bravura Bette Davis performance and excellent support from Herbert Marsh...
Sometimes, even filmmakers can be wrong about their own movies. Usually in these cases, the creators have a higher opinion of their work than anyone else does. Steven Soderbergh’s 1995 heist thriller The Underneath, however,...
With its confusing and frankly meaningless title, cable TV origins, and mostly B-level stars, The Last Seduction largely flew under viewers’ radars back in 1994. Fortunately, the movie holds up remarkably well as a darkly co...
In the span of barely over one year from May 1980 to August 1981, Lawrence Kasdan saw his first two produced screenplays, for The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark, become huge, iconic hits, and his own directorial d...
I, Jane Doe is a nifty little mystery that flips our hallowed justice system on its ear. It’s also a far better film than its lack of notoriety would lead one to believe.
A Strange Adventure is just that. This low-budget, mid-1950s film noir takes us on a journey, but it never quite feels as if we get anywhere.
Watching Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas face off is the main attraction of I Walk Alone, a by-the-numbers film noir that rarely rises above the mundane. Yet thanks to these two iconic tough guys, the hard-boiled tale of betrayal ...
A Technicolor film noir with overt homosexual overtones, Desert Fury is a fascinating and wildly entertaining Golden Age anomaly that teems with tension and flirts with camp. How on Earth did this subversive, titillating flick eve...
Down Three Dark Streets pulls back the curtain on the FBI as it chronicles a trio of investigations in a semi-documentary style. Broderick Crawford and Ruth Roman star in this splintered tale that’s salvaged by an array of f...
Average joe Sterling Hayden finds trouble galore with a desperate Ruth Roman, who’s holding highly coveted blueprints for intercontinental ballistic missiles in her purse(!) in 5 Steps to Danger. The all-but-forgotten, low-b...