While the title of mob masterpiece most often goes to “The Godfather” for its stunning drama and dark beauty, something must be said for honesty. Those two points belong to Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas.”

Taylor Sheridan makes his case for being one of the best working screenwriters today with “Wind River,” his third script to make it to the screen in three years and the first of the three that he’s directed.

After winning over theatre audiences in the ‘90s and early 2000s, Martin McDonagh moved into the filmmaking sphere and started racking up even more fans with “In Bruges” and the criminally underrated “Seven Psychopaths,” two sickly dark comedies lined start to finish with a brilliant albeit twisted humor and sharp dialogue. In “Three Billboards outside […]

In a year when the quality of life in middle America small towns has come back into focus, “Hell or High Water” feels like an important film, perhaps more important than it might have been had it been released prior to 2016. But it’s not just timeliness that makes this a good movie. There are […]

Law enforcement battles with drug cartels tend to be the focal point of bullet-ridden crime thrillers with strong “Type A” heroes and despicable villains and a handful of characters who cross the line between the two. “Sicario,” on the other hand, is good-and-evil gray area for endless miles.

Directors don’t become synonymous with genres as often as they used to in Hollywood’s Golden Age, but play the word association game with “David Fincher” and you’re bound to hear “thriller” come up. There’s little doubt that if you’re producing an intense, dark, mystery-driven film, Fincher’s your first choice, and he proves it yet again […]

The man made famous for glorifying the mob moves over to Wall Street —Martin Scorsese’s latest, “The Wolf of Wall Street,” based on the memoir of crooked stockbroker millionaire Jordan Belfort, is a tale of excess: money, drugs, profanity, nudity, sex — even (pardon the cliché) rock ‘n roll, given the soundtrack. So how does […]

If you’re an actor with any degree of prominence, you’ve probably asked your agent to get you into the next David O. Russell picture. Including “American Hustle,” the dude has helped his actors to 11 Oscar nominations in his last three films, with a nod in every major acting category each of the last two […]

Who says all “based on a true story” movies have to take themselves seriously? Regardless of how true-to-life the events of “Pain and Gain” are, the film offers a ballsy take on a crime thriller, namely in being unafraid of comic territory.

Los Angeles and gangsters. Before “Gangster Squad,” the first film that ought to come to mind is “L.A. Confidential.” For Ruben Fleischer’s latest, that creates an outrageous comparison point. The “Zombieland” and “30 Minutes or Less” director was probably not aiming that high. Even if he weren’t, he’s still not even aiming to add a […]

If I were to pitch you a movie about two police officers who are partners on patrol in South Central Los Angeles, one of your first inclinations might be “not another buddy copy comedy.” While “End of Watch” is often funny, the newest film from “Training Day” writer David Ayer, is no comedy.

The quality of a corruption-themed political thriller with a star-studded cast always comes down to one thing — the script. Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Barry Pepper, Kyle Chandler and Jeffrey Wright definitely qualify “Broken City” for that category of film, and so all eyes are on rookie screenwriter Brian Tucker.

In the marketing for “Seven Psychopaths,” CBS Films wants you to count the film’s seven stars, but the one real psychopath (and I mean that in most positive and endearing way possible) that matters is writer and director Martin McDonagh, whose sophomore film and follow-up to “In Bruges” is a cockeyed stroke of genius.

Seriously, prohibition did no one any favors. “Lawless” is a Western-inspired take on the gangster pic, in which the only rules are that there are no rules and the men with the power are the men who wield the most fear — and guns.

Welcome to “Drive,” Nicolas Winding Refn’s exercise in the tried and true lesson that less is more, and more when it follows less is pulse-pounding mayhem. Maybe somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of “Drive” could be considered “action” or “violence,” but Refn makes every second of it count. When each slowly mounting scene finally […]