Yearly Archives: 2016

The great Donald Sutherland gets his best screen “entrance” since “M*A*S*H” in the Canadian drama “Milton’s Secret.” Backlit, still ’60s hip, warm and wise, the man still wears a Hawaiian shirt with class. Alas, it’s an entrance wasted on a … Continue reading →

The charms of “Hillsong: Let Hope Rise,” essentially a tour documentary about a big pop band created by an Australian megachurch, plum evaded me. Meandering, stream-of-Biblical consciousness tunes, all under-written and over-produced pop pablum, performed by bearded, ripped-jeans wearing 30something … Continue reading →

Antoine Fuqua and his screenwriters take care to credit the original Japanese “Seven Samurai” screenplay, and still utterly miss the point with their “Magnificent Seven” remake. A tale of redemption, of desperate men facing their fates with the fatalism and … Continue reading →

Guilt, love and pity wrestle for primacy in “My Blind Brother,” a cute and cutting romantic comedy about the “able” person stuck in the shadows behind a blind “hero.” That’s how everyone refers to “The Amazing Robbie,” a character given … Continue reading →

Danny Fields was “the Company Freak” for Elektra Records in the 1960s, the “interface” between the drugs, sex and rock’n roll culture he immersed himself in, and “the suits.” He was “the speck of sand in the oyster” who instigated … Continue reading →

Well well well, Millennials. You’re the most tech-savvy generation in human history, but pitching a tent confounds you, and you still can’t find your way out the woods. You can load an app to your smart phone and control a … Continue reading →

  Here’s an idea sure to get your movie into a LOT of film festivals. Turn Jane Austen’s “Pride & Prejudice” into a gay romance. Maker the “prejudice” homophobia and suggest the “pride” is, well, gay. Writer-director Byrum Geisler’s “Before … Continue reading →

So there’s this no-budget indie thriller “ClownTown” coming out Sept. 30. Is there a connection between it and the sudden surge in scary clown sightings all over the South, originating in South Carolina? The setting is rural Ohio, but the … Continue reading →

Getting Oscar winning actress Emma Thompson into the cast of “Bridget Jones’s Baby” was a coup, and as Bridget’s OB-GYN, she’s the perfect droll foil to all the rom-com pregnancy nonsense going on around her. Letting her take a pass … Continue reading →

John Krasinski finds his way back on the big screen, both in front of and behind the camera, in the sentimental and sweet but obvious and sit-commie “The Hollars,” a melodrama about an amusingly dysfunctional family brought together by terminal … Continue reading →