The unexpected global success of “Pulp Fiction” in 1994 spawned a wave of wannabes and cash-ins, many of them mixing and matching elements that they thought made Quentin Tarantino’s movie a success: Violence, drugs, ostentatiously declamatory dialogue and monologues, time-shifting stories. Of course, the real reason for its success was …

Set in 1992 in the northernmost United States, where criminals run drugs and guns over the border with Canada, “Blood for Dust” is a hard, nasty crime thriller about hard, nasty men. Directed by Rod Blackhurst from a script by David Ebeltoft, it tells you what kind of movie it is from …

Matthew Modine has been acting in movies for over 40 years. He started out in the ’80s and ’90s in a string of memorable films, including “Vision Quest,” Alan Parker‘s “Birdy” (opposite another talented unknown named Nicolas Cage), Stanley Kubrick‘s “Full Metal Jacket,” and two Robert Altman ensemble dramas, “Streamers” and “Short Cuts.” At …

“Luca” is a refreshingly small-scaled and straightforward movie about friendship and acceptance, with minimal fantasy elements (save for the gimmick of having the two main characters, a couple of teenaged buddies, be sea monsters posing as humans). There are a couple of pretty mild messages (it’s good to be nice …

The prologue also strikes me as a mistake because it frames the rest of the movie as a thing that you have to get through in order to arrive at the ending you already know is coming based on the prologue, whereas simply showing us the broadcast itself (as sort …

“Preconceived methods, applied simply for demonstrative purposes, often end by reducing the complexity of films,” David and Kristin once wrote. That’s a sentiment I heartily agree with. It bears repeating today, now that so much of “cultural writing” consists of “takes” that discuss works of moving image art as if they …

I have Spectrum Wi-Fi and cable service at home, and it offers “free” on-demand movies, so I called one of them up recently: “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1.” Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn’t seen this 14-year-old film: Towards the end, the beloved wizard Dumbledore is killed …

That having been said, Goldblum’s vocal performance is so naturalistic and witty (he talks like a jazz pianist plays, never attacking the melody in quite the way you expect), and the conceit of having an “interviewer” who is essentially a stand-in for Trueba lets the story hop amongst many different …

As perfect a film as has ever been made, the original 1976 “Rocky” has become part of the pop culture unconscious, holding its spot as tightly as “Casablanca” and “It's a Wonderful Life.” It’s also as much of a medium-realigning work as the blockbuster that came out one year later, the first “Star …

Born in Elgin, Illinois, Shales worked as an editor at The Washington Examiner before getting hired as a writer for The Washington Post‘s Style desk in 1972. Five years later, he was named TV critic. His default voice was that of a skeptical midwestern curmudgeon who could be roused to righteous ire when …

Brooks’ follow-up, “Modern Romance,” is one of the great studies of romantic and sexual obsession, about a couple that keeps breaking up and getting back together even though they make each other miserable. If you squint a bit, you can see the influence of “Taxi Driver,” the Martin Scorsese film in …

Sometimes the close-ups of people’s faces are interrupted by flash-cuts of events that haven’t happened, or already happened. There are recurring images of flame, debris, and smaller chain-reaction explosions that resemble strings of firecrackers and non-incendiary images that evoke other awful, personal disasters. (There are many gradually expanding flashbacks in this film, where …