An Act of Murder

One of those stories where everyone involved is acting from the best of intentions, but everything could have come out much better if they had only spoken to each other. But that may be the point of the whole thing.

It’s a movie very much of its time. Frederick March is a respected judge who has been happily married for twenty years. But his wife is getting crippling headaches. ... Read more »

Act of Violence

Pretty interesting noir film. Van Heflin is a successful businessman in California with a young wife and son. Robert Ryan is an obsessed man with a grudge. He intends to kill Van, and he is relentless, but has enough bad luck that Van learns of his intentions, and flees. I ... Read more »

Adaptation

Simply one of the best movies I’ve ever seen, written by the most imaginative screenwriter working today: Charlie Kaufman, who wrote Being John Malkovich . I laughed my head off, even though it’s not primarily a comedy, ... Read more »

Addams Family Values

Not quite as good as the first one. The best thing about it, as with the first, is Christina Ricci as Wednesday. She is just perfectly deadpan, and all her responses are just right. Raúl Juliá and Anjelica Huston are both good. There is a nice effect so that every time we see Morticia’s face her eyes are weirdly illuminated. I thought Christopher Lloyd was quite a bit over the top as ... Read more »

The Adjustment Bureau

Philip K. Dick was the Vincent van Gogh of science fiction. Vincent painted these weird things that no one understood, and never sold a canvas. Phil wrote these weird stories in pulp magazines no one read and books on trashy paperback racks and never had two dimes to rub together. Now Vincent’s works sell for 8 or 9 figures, and Phil’s ... Read more »

Admission

Tina Fey is the one of the brightest female comics, both as a writer and an actress, working today. She really deserves better than this by-the-numbers outing concerning her conflicts as an admissions officer at Princeton, a woman who every day has to dash the hopes of hundreds of applicants. She finds out that one such is the child she gave up for adoption a long time ago. Complications ... Read more »

Adrift

SPOILER WARNING. I’ve seen a lot of movies lately about being alone in a tiny boat on the boundless sea. There was Robert Redford in the dialogue-free All Is Lost. Then there’s Life of Pi and In the Heart of the Sea. Seems like I’m forgetting one, too. Well, this is a good one. A couple are hired to sail a ... Read more »

Adventureland

Sometimes it just doesn’t work. For me, I mean. This film was well-reviewed (75% at Metacritic), and I read some of the best ones, and kept nodding. Yes, they’re all pretty much right. The writing was good, the acting was good, this was not your run-of-the-mill coming-of-age film … and yet it never engaged me. ... Read more »

Adventureland

Sometimes it just doesn’t work. For me, I mean. This film was well-reviewed (75% at Metacritic), and I read some of the best ones, and kept nodding. Yes, they’re all pretty much right. The writing was good, the acting was good, this was not your run-of-the-mill coming-of-age film … and yet it never engaged me. Jesse Eisenberg is getting almost as tiresome as Hugh Grant with his awkward, ... Read more »

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

Nobody has had as much trouble getting a film made and distributed as Terry Gilliam. His Don Quixote project was destroyed by a deluge right out of Noah’s Ark. But his biggest troubles have come not from God, but from insane studio heads. They almost succeeded in burying Read more »