Monthly Archives: June 2015

“Gabriel” is a moody, intimate character study filmed and performed in shades of grey. It’s about a mentally ill young man desperate to use his first hours after getting out of an institution to make his life right. Not that … Continue reading →

The teen hides comic books inside a book of Shakespeare’s plays. His favorite stories concern a superhero, The Phantom Halo. But Dad doesn’t approve. When he’s sober, he quotes Shakespeare. He does that when he’s drunk, too. So Sam, played … Continue reading →

The Savage Nomads, Black Spades, Harlem Turks, Screaming Phantoms, Golden Guineas — these were “the armies of the night,” as an iconic 1970s film described them. Block by block, they controlled much of New York, especially the South Bronx, nicknamed … Continue reading →

He’s not working as much as he did during his Go-To Villain days. I blame Harry Potter for that. Surely Alan Rickman got rich off that franchise and could pick and choose the parts to turn his plummy voice loose … Continue reading →

The hook for Luke Korem’s engaging documentary, “Lord Montagu,” is scandal and sex. But that becomes just a prologue, abandoned early on in this story of a bisexual British lord who survived imprisonment for his sexual orientation and went on … Continue reading →

Jason Bateman and Ginnifer Goodwin provide the voices, Disney has set this one for release in March of 2016.

“All poets are mad,” the 16th century scholar observed. And so they have been, at least in the movies — mad and mercurial and of course, entertaining drunks. Dylan Thomas is the patron saint of this stereotype, and it’s his … Continue reading →

  Touching and wise, cute and occasionally cloying, “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” is a dramedy that taps into both real teen angst and behavior, and our fantasies of what we hope teens are thinking and feeling and … Continue reading →