Michael Phillips

Con artists working the Riviera: Is there a comic premise more old-fashioned yet strangely hardy than that old thing? Certainly it has possibilities, even in 2019, which explains "The Hustle."...

A crime reveals so much more than the crime itself, once word gets out and a city tears itself half to pieces blaming either the perpetrators or the victims or...

If we can't make room on our planet of avengers, and games of thrones, for a shape-shifting rumination on time and loss and memory such as Bi Gan's "Long Day's...

Facts matter in fictionalized films about famous writers, but only as much as that word "fictionalized" can comfortably allow. In the cliché-prone realm of the biopic it's hard enough to...

A demonic charmer of a documentary, director Penny Lane's "Hail Satan?" goes a long way toward explaining why the relatively young and impressively large entity known as the Satanic Temple...

"Alien," you probably know. The 1979 Ridley Scott thriller, which gave John Hurt's character so much stomach trouble while giving Sigourney Weaver's Ripley a formidable, drooling xenomorphic adversary, handed top...

"Stockholm" raises some intriguing questions, among them: Does anyone ever suggest to Ethan Hawke that he can afford to do a teensy bit less, even in a flamboyant, 110-percent sort...