Jarmusch has a thing for renegades, and what character plays outside the law more than a Vampire? 

Refining his slightly morbid, slyly humorous vision, in Only Lovers Left Alive, Jim Jarmusch lures us into a singular universe of perpetual night, of timelessness, of history folding in upon itself, of love most tender. 

Be forewarned, this is an art film, this is a visual poem, played out in the haunted nightscapes of an abandoned Detroit and a ghostly Tangier. Our stars are the original lovers (and original outlaws,) Adam and Eve, played by a drinkable Tom Higgleston and a transcendent Tilda...

In 1950, the British computer scientist, Alan Turing, wrote a paper on artificial intelligence in which he described what is now called the “Turing Test.” Turing proposed that a computer could be said to have achieved intelligence if a person conversing with it could not distinguish between the computer and another human being. In the remarkable new science fiction movie, Her, writer/director Spike Jonze depicts a computer program that not only passes the Turing test but demonstrates the capacity for empathy, insight, and love. 

To say that Her is an unusual love story is an understatement. Intelligent...

To me, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is destined to be a feel-good classic. I bow to Ben Stiller for blazing a way through the thicket of Hollywood cliches to a film that manages to be realistic, fantastic, action-y and heartwarming all at once. Even though I’ve had my occasional lapses of affection for Stiller, and yes maybe he occasionally does let the camera linger a few seconds too long on his own face, I loved him as Walter Mitty.  He really transforms Thurber’s creation into a post-modern, post-hero hero. A man of our times.

It’s intriguing to me that some major reviewers have...

World War Z is in fact a pretty intelligent action thriller. While the basic concept is a bit like Contagion, the narrative is a restless one and the pacing brisk. A realistic style dominates throughout most of the film and, although the “zekes” hurl themselves somewhat sloppily at their victims, they actually do look like the undead might really look. Oscar for makeup?

Kudos to the DP and editor. Cutting between day and night, grisly military bases and pristine medical labs, vast panoramas crawling with the undead and gorgeous close-ups of the key characters - especially Pitt, who (aside from Matt Damon) is...

The task of interpreting Paul Thomas Anderson’s film, “The Master,” is unusually challenging. I got a hint of the impending difficulty when, after first viewing the film, I realized that many of the promotional trailer scenes had been cut. My difficulties were compounded after I downloaded the official film script and saw that the film deviated from it in many respects. Moreover, the recent Blu-ray packaging of the film includes 20 minutes of separate extra footage that was not included in the final cut of the film. I will stick to discussing the theatrically released version.

Most critics...