King’s Row (1942)

Conspiracy Theory, written by Brian Helgeland and directed by Richard Donner, attempts to do for lunatics what movies like The Shawshank Redemption tried to do for convicts—that is to sanitize them and make them lovable victims of government and society instead of dangerous social malcontents. Charming, blue-eyed Mel Gibson plays Jerry, a middle aged New…

If our moronic politicians were not as corrupt as three-day-old roadkill they wouldn’t need the media to tell them what to do

Firelight, written and directed by William Nicholson (Shadowlands, Nell), is a contemporary chick-flick, one of those costume drama romances that attempts to marry traditional girlish fantasies to a mild strain of feminism so as to make its mainly female consumers feel comfortable, even virtuous, about watching what would otherwise be embarrassingly retrograde material. A poor…

Lost in Space, directed by Stephen Hopkins, is just too silly for words. In yet another cinematic updating of a long-forgotten TV series, William Hurt plays Professor John Robinson, a scientist who has been chosen to emigrate with his family to the planet Alpha Prime, which is ten years in a fast spaceship away, but…

The hallmark of what is becoming the M. Night Shyamalan franchise is a movie starring Bruce Willis and a remarkable boy, set in Philadelphia with supernatural overtones and a surprise ending. The Sixth Sense (1999) may have sold more tickets on the strength of the mystery of its ending than any film since Psycho. So,…

An investigation into her family’s darkest secrets by Wunderkind director, Sarah Polley