Monthly Archives: July 2017

“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 →

Reese Witherspoon, Chris Pine, Oprah, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Mindy Kaling, Michael Pena, Zach Galifianakis — all in service of a big screen rendition of Madeleine L’Engle’s novel. “Wrinkle” opens next May. Very Harry Potter-ish from its look, in the way it … Continue reading →

“Lord, thy sea is so great and my boat is so small.”

It’s great to see Gerard Butler take a break from mind-numbing action franchises, lame sword and sorcery flicks and decades of failed comedies and try something new. But it must be the luck of the Scots that when he does … Continue reading →

In “Dunkirk,” perhaps this year’s earliest Best Picture Contender, a flight of RAF pilots make a crossing to keep the Stukas from strafing “our lads” on the beaches, awaiting their fate. Tom Hardy is in a Spitfire, and Jack Lowden. … Continue reading →