While watching writer-director Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s latest film, “The Truth,” I couldn’t shake the fact that there was something very familiar about it. Perhaps the fact that it was selected for both Venice and TIFF caused it to lodge in my… Read More ›
In the first few minutes of the new David Bautista film, “My Spy,” there are references to “Fifty Shades of Grey,” “Iron Man 2,” and “Notting Hill.” There are also a bunch of jokes based on diegetic needle drops (okay,… Read More ›
The most impressive thing about writer-director David Koepp’s “You Should Have Left” (which is based on the novel by Daniel Kehlmann) is that it is not content with simply offering up an exploration of whether Kevin Bacon’s Theo Conroy’s dark… Read More ›
Watching a movie there is often a push-and-pull where one’s head fights their heart (or vice versa). Logically speaking, the characters are acting in incredibly dumb ways, ways sure to result in poor outcomes. Emotionally speaking, the characters are trapped… Read More ›
As always when I tackle horror, I come at it from an “intrigued by the genre but certainly not an expert in the minutiae” stance (there are sites which focus solely on horror and do so wonderfully). And, stating that,… Read More ›
As Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods” moves back and forth between the past and the present, Vietnam and the United States, open war and hidden, it becomes clear that we are watching Lee is at his best. More than that… Read More ›
Sometimes the movie you’re watching isn’t the movie you think you’re watching. Worse, sometimes it’s not the movie those behind it think they’ve made. With “The King of Staten Island” Judd Apatow has indeed created yet another film about adult… Read More ›
Imagine a movie about a widowed father who has been searching for a missing son for years. The father’s second son is still around, now married with a teenager of his own, but the father sees right past him, always… Read More ›
There is something to be said for moody films which contemplate what it means to be alive and what it means to die on one’s own terms. Nicolaj Coster-Waldau’s latest, “Exit Plan,” is just that – a movie that examines… Read More ›
It would be unfair to say that once the credits start rolling on Josephine Decker’s “Shirley” one will ask why they bothered watching it all the way through. The answer to that is Elisabeth Moss. Yet again proving herself to… Read More ›
There are movies out there that make you feel the weight of whatever event is taking place within them. Then there are movies where the event may be important, but rather than experiencing emotions based on it, the sentiment felt… Read More ›
A painter has a show in an art gallery. A drug addict in the middle of an extended binge breaks into said gallery with another man and steals two of the painter’s works. When the thief comes down and is… Read More ›
There is no specific need for a Stargate to appear in “Scoob!,” the new Scooby-Doo based animated film that’s arrived on VOD today, but it fits into a movie which also incorporates the Blue Falcon, Dynomutt, Dick Dastardly, Simon Cowell,… Read More ›
There is something unsettling that takes place throughout the running time of “How to Build a Girl.” The movie, which stars Beanie Feldstein, is full of golden little moments, great bits of humor, and a wonderful lead performance. It is… Read More ›
No, “Spaceship Earth” is not a tale of the ride inside the sphere right at the front of EPCOT, and if some of the architecture in Matt Wolf’s documentary looks similar to that of EPCOT’s Future World, it has to… Read More ›
Watching the new Netflix documentary, “Becoming,” born from Michelle Obama’s memoir of the same name, there is the inescapable feeling that it is, in no small part, a promotional piece. That is, the documentary exists to work in synergistic fashion… Read More ›
There are times during “The True History of the Kelly Gang” where director Justin Kurzel offers up wide shots of Australian wilderness. The shots vary in terms of their visual substance, but the underlying feeling is always the same: the… Read More ›
Although Richard Gray’s latest film is called “Robert the Bruce,” the title character, who is played by Angus Macfadyen, isn’t really the lead. Yes, Macfadyen played the role previously in “Braveheart,” and this movie picks up several years after the… Read More ›
Disney has been anthropomorphizing elephants for decades so it doesn’t come as a surprise to see them do so again in the new DisneyNature film, “Elephant” (and, yes, animal documentaries regularly anthropomorphize their subjects). Launching this Friday on Disney+ in… Read More ›
If the ascendancy of Donald Trump to the Presidency didn’t already make it clear, elections matter; they have very real consequences for individuals within a country. As the new documentary “Slay the Dragon,” out this Friday, makes even more obvious… Read More ›
