Monthly Archives: November 2016

Whatever the artistic pretense, some horror movies leave you grateful that the filmmaker mercifully chose to shoot it in black and white. With “The Eyes of My Mother,” that means we’re left with the hope that whatever’s in that glass, … Continue reading →

Lee Chandler isn’t crazy about eye contact. The Quincy, Massachusetts janitor carries himself like a person who’s taken one too many blows, a dead man walking, working, drinking and going through the motions. Every interpersonal interaction is awkward, drawn out. … Continue reading →

Harry Benson captured The Beatles, giddy on their first-ever arrival in the U.S., pillow-fighting in their hotel. He was with them in Miami when he thought it would be cool and funny to drag them down the street to meet … Continue reading →

Mr. Nyx is the guy you call when you’re a cop somewhere in the South and you stumble across a de-consecrated church filled with blood, candles, pentangles, goats kept in cages and corpses. He surveys the scene from behind his … Continue reading →

The epic opening scene of “La La Land” is a long-take roaming camera song and dance number set amid a sea of drivers stranded on a Los Angeles freeway overpass. A song burbles up on a radio, the driver sings … Continue reading →

A Mongolian teen breaks the gender barrier in her native land’s sport of eagle hunting in “The Eagle Huntress,” a striking if predictable and plainly-staged docudrama set in one of the world’s most forbidding landscapes. In Mongolia, the steppes tribesman … Continue reading →

A glaring injustice of the Internet pops up when you Google Image  search”Toshiro.” Your screen fills with a sea of shots of a bleached-blond anime character. Film fans know there is but one Toshiro, the legendary Japanese film star Toshiro … Continue reading →

One thing the great Michael Shannon, the best working actor without an Oscar to his name, almost never gets in his movies is “the girl.” With a scowl that scares, looks that could have been carved by a hatchet and … Continue reading →

Disney’s “Moana” is threatening the “Frozen” holiday opening weekend record with a blockbusting Tuesday night/Wed. — well over $15 million, just a tad over what “Frozen” did on its opening Wednesday on the way to setting the Thanksgiving weekend box office … Continue reading →

As crisp as every crease on Brad Pitt’s perfectly-pressed period picture pants, as slick and shiny as any classic from the Hollywood “Dream Factory,” “Allied” is a World War II romance that lacks the spark — any spark — of … Continue reading →