Scarface: Ruling the Underworld

Paul Muni. Photo: United Artists The film begins with a stern warning, an indictment of gang rule in America and the government that does too little to stop it. The…

Boy from Heaven

Young Adam (Tawfeek Barhom), the son of a fisherman, goes to the prestigious Al-Azhar University in Cairo to study, but is soon drawn into a murder investigation. The director’s best…

Westworld

What became an exciting thriller by Michael Crichton in 1973 was turned into a far more ambitious but also convoluted TV series, set in the 2050s where a corporation is…

Last Night in Soho

Fashion student Ellie Turner (Thomasin McKenzie) moves to London and begins having strange, realistic dreams that transport her back to the Swinging Sixties. Edgar Wright pulls you into the charm…

Death on the Nile

In 1937, Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) finds himself on a steamer on the Nile, trying to figure out whom among the passengers is a murderer. Branagh donned the elaborate Poirot…

The Unlikely Murderer

On a late winter evening in 1986, a graphic designer (Robert Gustafsson) becomes the unlikely murderer of Sweden’s Prime Minister. What was initially presented in 2020 by the prosecutor in…

Blue Velvet: Quite an Earful

Kyle MacLachlan and Isabella Rossellini. Photo: De Laurentiis Entertainment Group In his annual movie guide, Leonard Maltin expresses amazement at how Blue Velvet was a critically lauded film. Roger Ebert wrote about…

Joker: Birth of a Clown Prince

Joaquin Phoenix. Photo: Warner As it is about to premiere, Joker has become a controversial film. For the Twitter crowd, director Todd Phillips’s explanation why he decided to make the…

The Girl in the Spider’s Web 

Lisbeth Salander (Claire Foy) is hired to get her hands on a computer program built to access the world’s nuclear codes. Seven years after The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo…

The Dying Detective 

Lars Martin Johansson (Rolf Lassgård) has retired, but after surviving a stroke he needs rehabilitation and turns his attention to a cold case, the murder of a girl. The third…