Movie reviews of Eric Hillis

Anyone with an appreciation for groundbreaking filmmaking will find value in this glimpse of an exciting future for American cinema that sadly never quite came to pass. Review

Wenders offers you a perfect two hours. What you make of the other 22 in your day is up to you. Review

There's a lot of schlock here, but it's rarely fun. Review

Bleeding Love is an easy watch. Ewan McGregor is one of the most affable performers working today, and his daughter seems to have inherited his natural charisma. Review

The Promised Land has everything you want from a historical epic: compelling characters with interesting arcs; larger than life performances; stunning cinematography and production design that contrasts the harshness of the heath with the comfort and finery of the de Schinkel estate; and lots of bloodshed. Review

Think of Phantom Thread if Daniel Day Lewis's dressmaker wasn't a narcissist but simply an adoring lover who delighted in creating dresses for his lover, and you'll have an idea of the dynamic here. Review

While it resembles a Hitchcock movie in its Britishness, its wry humour and its aching romance, it never has the suspense of a Hitchcock movie, as we're never sure who exactly Clay should be wary of until the closing minutes. Review

The whole setup is so laughable that it might have made for a smart black comedy, but Trengrove makes the terrible decision to play this scenario with a straight face. Review

Like its male protagonists, it keeps its emotions in check until a climactic emotional outburst that will stir something in the most macho of male viewers. Durkin's film is a reminder that it's not just natural for men to shed tears, but necessary. Review

Comparing a movie to watching someone else play a video game is generally a highly negative critique, but in this case it adds to the maddening sense of helplessness as we watch history unfold, its controls in someone else's hands. Review

On the basis of his excellent debut, Jefferson deserves to reach the widest audience possible. You can tell he's a special filmmaker because he even finds a way to make the act of writing engrossing for the viewer. Review

Sheil is quietly fantastic as the taciturn Alina, giving little away at first but exposing her humanity little by little. Review

It's never quite as effective as it promises, chiefly because the threat to Lilja is so ambiguous that there's very little opportunity to build suspense. Review

Hagiography it might be, but Dario Argento Panico doesn't try to pretend that Argento's best work didn't end in the 1980s. Review

Haigh's film asks us to stop wagging our fingers at the past and ask if we're really living in the best version of the present. Review

Its ending may cause you to shake your head as you leave the cinema, but the ideas raised by Baghead's central concept just might haunt you on your train ride home. Review

That the movie provoked such a reaction is testament to its power, and decades later it's the stuffy reviewers of the era who are left with egg on their faces as Peeping Tom is now considered a classic that has lost none of its power. Review

It may have been wise to set Trunk in the 2000s, as it never quite reckons with how modern technology would be incorporated into this scenario. Review

There are blackly comic moments in the relationship that develops between Rose and Celie, a decidedly odd couple who bicker over trifling matters like whose turn it is to wash the dishes, all while in the process of history's greatest scientific breakthrough. Review

Those seeking a classic American character drama need not worry about Payne pulling the football away at the last moment. Review

For all its melancholy insight, The Civil Dead is never as blackly comic as it believes itself to be. There are several setups that have great potential for Larry David-esque comedy but they fall flat. Review

Once The Marsh King's Daughter transitions from character study to survival thriller it gets lost in the woods. Review

If you're allergic to bohemians you'll need a strong antihistamine to get through Showing Up, writer/director Kelly Reichardt's fourth collaboration with actress Michelle Williams. Review

Just as her character is left alone in an unreliable world, Comer is left to cradle a film that would be largely unremarkable without her presence. Review