Sorcerer: Calamity in Colombia

Photo: Paramount The premiere of Sorcerer, a remake of the equally excellent Wages of Fear (1954), was marred by a troubled production in the jungles of the Dominican Republic, bloated…

Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler: Weimar’s Woes

Photo: Universum Film In 1922, two extraordinary films came out of the Weimar Republic. One was an influential horror movie, Nosferatu, an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s ”Dracula”. The other one…

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…

Don’t Worry Darling

Victory, California, is a perfect 1950s community built in the desert where the men work for a secret project and their wives take care of the home… but there are…

Assault on Precinct 13: Standoff at Anderson

Photo: Turtle Releasing Organization After writing Dark Star (1974) together with John Carpenter, Dan O’Bannon found his friendship with the director deteriorating. He detected a coolness in Carpenter’s attitude that…

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…

Dexter: New Blood

When Dexter ended its seven-year run, critics and audiences were far from happy, so this limited series was a second chance to get things right. Reconnecting with the last scene…