Boston Globe

A gorgeously sorrowful prose poem about being Black in America, then and now. It hits you in your head but mostly your heart.

Posted Nov 19, 2020

Double Indemnity (1944)

A powerful, ruthless and almost cruelly exciting picture in which Fred MacMurray and Bareara Stanwyck do the finest acting of their respective careers.

Posted Nov 18, 2020

Gilda (1946)

This reviewer is completely baffled as to... what happened during the picture, and what the whole idea was. But maybe it was because she was just so overwhelmed by the astounding characterization of Rita Hayworth in the title role.

Posted Nov 18, 2020

Mädchen in Uniform (Girls in Uniform) (Maidens in Uniform) (1931)

Globe Staff

Hollywood could learn much from Maedchen in Uniform, and while It would be impossible to duplicate such a film... American directors may see the value of imagination and restraint as opposed to bald realism and spectacular "action."

Posted Nov 17, 2020

The Paradine Case (1948)

[The Paradine Case] has almost everything to recommend it: a superb director, Alfred Hitchcock; an impressive cast, a typical expensive and authentic production by David O. Selznick and an exciting story.

Posted Nov 16, 2020

Rear Window (1954)

The story is told with tricks and intricate technique, but the mystery magician, Mr. Hitchcock, never forgets that what people want most is a spine-chilling climax. He gives it to them.

Posted Nov 16, 2020

Home of the Brave (1949)

This impressive, really great picture is so vital, so eloquent, so compelling, that the public which has been complaining of seeing no good motion pictures should regain confidence.

Posted Nov 16, 2020

2.5/4

Monsoon (2020)

A delicate, observant, and rather too quiescent drama of coming home to a strange land, "Monsoon" is an interesting change of pace for star Henry Golding and another musing on diaspora by the Cambodia-born British filmmaker Hong Khaou.

Posted Nov 12, 2020

2.5/4

The Climb (2020)

The movie has a good amount of truth and a fair amount of enjoyable lies, and it ends with a shrug that contradicts the scars we've spent 97 minutes watching get inflicted.

Posted Nov 12, 2020

3/4

Ammonite (2020)

Lee lets us indulge in a belated outrage for a woman denied her place in science and history, but it's Winslet's carefully calibrated empathy toward Mary Anning that keeps us rapt.

Posted Nov 11, 2020

1.5/4

Chick Fight (2020)

It's a very dim "GLOW."

Posted Nov 11, 2020

3/4

The Life Ahead (2020)

The attempt's the thing, and watching these two tough customers wrestle for control, within the film and on the screen, is worth the monthly subscription.

Posted Nov 11, 2020

2/4

Hillbilly Elegy (2020)

The movie's a neoliberal's fantasy and a sociopolitical tract defanged. It will probably get nominated for a lot of awards.

Posted Nov 11, 2020

Iron Jawed Angels (2003)

Iron Jawed Angels relies on a disappointingly conventional script, one that delivers stock characters who have no dimensionality, and simplistic plot abbreviations that you'd find in a high school textbook.

Posted Nov 10, 2020

3.5/4

Possessor: Uncut (2020)

It's something to see even when you're watching through your fingers, but the film's big, beguiling ideas never get satisfyingly developed, and the ending is a shocker that doesn't resonate very far past the end credits.

Posted Nov 8, 2020

3.5/4

City Hall (2020)

What Frederick Wiseman has been doing for all these years and in all these films is trying to make art of decency and process. In the good ones, he's succeeded. "City Hall" is one of the very good ones.

Posted Nov 8, 2020

3/4

Let Him Go (2020)

It's the contradictions that sell it.

Posted Nov 8, 2020

Treasure Island (1920)

Globe Staff

Maurice Tourneur, producer of the film, has followed the story of the classic faithfully and produced a picture that is packed with red-blooded adventure.

Posted Nov 4, 2020

1.5/4

Holidate (2020)

You'll find better deals on the sale shelf at the Christmas Store - on Dec. 26.

Posted Oct 28, 2020

2/4

The True Adventures of Wolfboy (2020)

The result is a movie that plays like a noble but misfired adaptation of the young adult novel it never was.

Posted Oct 28, 2020

2/4

Rebecca (2020)

Everyone behaves themselves in this "Rebecca," whereas the point of the book and the first movie is that our worst behavior is always floating just below the waterline, ready to bob to the surface at the wrong moment.

Posted Oct 25, 2020

2.5/4

Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm (2020)

Borat may be the Little Tramp's evil twin, but he's also Forrest Gump's smarter brother, and he knows exactly what's in that box of chocolates - and how they're making us sick.

Posted Oct 25, 2020

2/4

The Witches (2020)

"The Witches" becomes scary in new and not always fruitful ways. It's rated PG, but trust me, it'll give younger kids the screaming meemees.

Posted Oct 25, 2020

3/4

Synchronic (2020)

Still, it's the duo's wonky, systematic approach to the gimmick that makes "Synchronic" so much fun.

Posted Oct 25, 2020

3.5/4

I Am Greta (2020)

Because Grossman served as his own crew, "I Am Greta" is an intimate look at a reluctant personality.

Posted Oct 25, 2020

3/4

Ham on Rye (2020)

"Ham on Rye" will frustrate literal-minded audiences, but it's a work of gentle, genuine American surrealism - a lo-fi love song to those left behind by character and chance.

Posted Oct 22, 2020

The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)

The writing was a bit grandiose and self-important, a tendency that the movie's writer-director, Aaron Sorkin, has turned into a style. But he structured the late 1960s story strategically, even if he decided not to worry about historical accuracy.

Posted Oct 21, 2020

3.5/4

White Noise (2020)

Peter Keough

"White Noise" is an expertly edited, four-year immersion into a phenomenon that has shaped the volatile politics of our time.

Posted Oct 19, 2020

3.5/4

Pariah Dog (2019)

Peter Keough

Heartbreaking and luminous.

Posted Oct 19, 2020

What the Constitution Means to Me (2020)

Don Aucoin

Schreck matches the wit and fire of her writing with a riveting performance that often does not feel like a performance at all, but rather a cri de coeur wrenched up from a deep place where the personal, the historical, and the universal have met...

Posted Oct 19, 2020

David Byrne's American Utopia (2020)

The show is a musical wonder... The songs are the thing, old and new ones equally transporting, their clarity as rich as their mystery.

Posted Oct 15, 2020

3.5/4

Martin Eden (2020)

"Martin Eden" is old-school cinematic soul food - a sweepingly stylish and smart Italian coming-of-age drama that feels as if it could have been made 60 years ago, during the heyday of Visconti.

Posted Oct 14, 2020

3/4

Shithouse (2020)

The movie is refreshingly honest about the stresses and depression that can come with being young, male, and unmoored.

Posted Oct 14, 2020

2/4

Honest Thief (2020)

It's perfectly generic on-demand product that will eat up an hour and a half of your life and be immediately forgotten.

Posted Oct 14, 2020

4/5

Totally Under Control (2020)

What becomes palpably clear watching "Totally Under Control" is that a bureaucracy already stacked against rapid response was made infinitely worse by the politicization of the crisis and the gutting of the civil service by the Trump White House.

Posted Oct 12, 2020

The Boys in the Band (2020)

It's the cast the kept me hooked, though. Having worked together on stage, the actors bring a strong lived-in feeling to their interplay, but they don't need to project into a theater. They can blend effortlessly.

Posted Oct 9, 2020

Softie (2020)

Peter Keough

Softie will inspire those who feel that resistance to power is futile and serve as a warning to those who think such a degradation of democracy as is happening in Kenya can't happen here.

Posted Oct 8, 2020

3/4

The Forty-Year-Old Version (2020)

All in all, quite impressive for a debut. Let's hope we don't have to wait another 40 years for the next one.

Posted Oct 7, 2020

4/4

Time (2020)

Intensely moving.

Posted Oct 7, 2020

2.5/4

Herb Alpert is... (2020)

It's mostly devoted to Alpert's blissful second marriage, to singer Lani Hall - they've been married nearly 50 years - and his philanthropic largess. But since there's a lot to gush about, that's okay.

Posted Oct 4, 2020

2/4

The Glorias (2020)

Steinem's no-nonsense persona actually undercuts Taymor's baroque tendencies, such as when the director interrupts an interview scene with an overbaked "Wizard of Oz" fantasy involving a tornado of feminist fury.

Posted Oct 4, 2020

3/4

Dick Johnson Is Dead (2020)

I won't tell you how it ends but I will say that Mark Twain would probably give it a thumbs up.

Posted Oct 4, 2020

2.5/4

On The Rocks (2020)

The film's an amuse bouche made by people with the skills for a banquet. Don't be surprised if you come away feeling a little empty inside.

Posted Oct 4, 2020

The Battle Cry of Peace (1915)

Globe Staff

A thrilling and spectacular appeal for American preparedness against war is contained in the stupendous film production, The Battle Cry of Peace.

Posted Sep 28, 2020

3/4

The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)

"Trial" is so inherently compelling - and so directly germane to an America where the government labels cities "anarchist jurisdictions" and states are drawing up laws against free assembly - that it doesn't need the frills.

Posted Sep 24, 2020

3/4

The Nest (2020)

You may want more.

Posted Sep 21, 2020

2/4

Antebellum (2020)

With luck, Monáe will be cast in more roles as smart as she is. This one is merely clever - a grimly "provocative" entertainment whose greater meanings are gone with the wind.

Posted Sep 21, 2020

2.5/4

The Way I See It (2020)

But what's best about the documentary is all that Obama sun. It's hard to come by these days, even in retrospect.

Posted Sep 21, 2020

3.5/4

Killer of Sheep (2007)