Monthly Archives: October 2017

Murder mysteries have a sacred pact with the audience. They have to give us enough clues to cling to the thread of the plot, some hints that point toward the “real killer,” some sense that the wrongs we see are … Continue reading →

History remembers Mark Felt as “Deep Throat,” the heroic all-knowing secret informant who fueled much of the Washington Post reporting that exposed the corruption and crimes of the Nixon White House. But the real man was more complicated than that … Continue reading →

Moving, majestic and manly, “Only the Brave” is a nearly perfect rendition of the sort of righteous, heroic entertainment Hollywood routinely built around its best leading men. It’s a combat film where the enemy is fire, a Western where the … Continue reading →

You never want to grade a movie on the curve, but where B, C or D movies are concerned, exceptions are made. “Mayhem” has two not-quite-names in the cast — star Steven Yeun, of “The Walking Dead,” and character actor … Continue reading →

  The portrait that movies give us of nuns has long been out of date, disconnected from modern reality. Even the depictions of harsh Catholic school disciplinarians and secretive baby traders (“Philomena”) belong to an earlier era of starched habits … Continue reading →

More tech, more Africa, more costume. More sizzle? Not really. But one can sense the pent-up demand for this one swelling with each passing month. Not my genre, but I’m curious.

 Rose Marie was a crucial comic cog in the well-oiled comedy machine that was “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” and taught the dancing/singing/pratfalling Van Dyke comic timing. “Wait for your laugh!” She was the first woman to host a TV … Continue reading →

  “Jungle” hurls characters into the wilds of Bolivia’s then-uncharted Tuichi River region for a harrowing and hallucinatory trek from the middle of nowhere to the suburbs of nowhere. It’s based on a true story, stars Daniel Radcliffe, and features … Continue reading →

It started, just after Labor Day, with eruptions about has-been internet movie reviewing pioneer Harry Knowles and undenied allegations from the professionally (Hah!) unpleasant reviewer/programmer Devin Faraci. But that was followed by the A-bomb that the Harvey Weinstein story has … Continue reading →

  So “Happy Death Day” is a “Groundhog Day” knockoff with a dead teenager horror twist. Somebody gets to live and relive a day over and over again until he or she “gets it right.” And yeah, so what if … Continue reading →