Monthly Archives: July 2017

The long career of Christopher Plummer only truly turned “glorious” decades after his most famous turn — as the dapper, testy and sexy Captain Von Trapp in “The Sound of Music,” a movie he has long playfully dismissed as “S … Continue reading →

“Find your tribe” is a running theme through decades of cinema about the American high school experience. Figure out who your people are, see who shares your interests and values and make a home among them. But as the coarse … Continue reading →

One of the stark ways this summer has schooled movie fans and movie reviewers is in the relative valuation of aggregated movie reviews, a hard lesson for sci-fi and comic book fangirls and boys to absorb. Read the studio-culled blurbs … Continue reading →

Raunchy, rude and weapons-grade wicked, “Girls Trip” is the funniest big studio comedy since “Trainwreck.” It’s “Bridesmaids” with brass, “The Hangover” with flava and does for New Orleans what that film did for Vegas — showcases it as headquarters for … Continue reading →

“The Room” has a lot in common with “Ed Wood.” There’s a riotously incompetent director/star in charge, and a lot of not-totally-delusional folks on the set with him. “The Disaster Artist” is about the making of “The Room.” Not the … Continue reading →

One of film, literature and mythology’s greatest archetypes gets a spotless new wardrobe in “Lady Macbeth,” a British film about a Russian novel based on the femme fatale of Shakespeare’s Scottish Play. Calculating, self-serving, willful and cunning, this throwback anti-heroine … Continue reading →

A master filmmaker with all the state-of-the-art resources due a man who produces sci-fi and comic book blockbusters turns his attention to history with breathless, stunning results in “Dunkirk.” Christopher Nolan transforms the legend of Britain’s “miracle” retreat from the … Continue reading →

“The Gracefield Incident” is an attempted Canadian “Blair Witch Project,” and a veritable minefield of spoiler alerts waiting to happen. It’s “Cabin in the Woods” meets “Signs,” a Bigfoot movie as imagined by M. Night Shyamalan. And it’s, well, not … Continue reading →

Martin Landau didn’t really get this “actor’s ACTOR” reputation until “Ed Wood.” And everybody working in criticism and film journalism back in ’94 had a ringside seat to the makeover. He’d worked with Hitchcock, done a few TV series and … Continue reading →

George A. Romero, the “Night of the Living Dead” inventor of the modern zombie movie, godfather of “The Living Dead” (which he wasn’t crazy about–“a soap opera” with zombies, bingo), loved those filmmaker photographer’s vests he was often photographed in, … Continue reading →