Monthly Archives: December 2017

Rosamund Pike is finding the best way for a beautiful actress to get Hollywood to take her seriously is to be bad — violently so. Daniel Bruhl was born to play a Baader Meinhoff Gang-era German “revolutionary” and terrorist. And … Continue reading →

It takes a while to settle into the the rhythms, the language and languid, lurid Old South melodramatics of “Mudbound,” a Sundance darling turned Netflix “event.” For the better part of an hour, it’s fair to scratch your head over … Continue reading →

We’re getting to that time of year when awards are piling up to make a sufficient guess at where the “critical” consensus is regarding the best pictures of 2017. Critics don’t pick the Oscars, or the Golden Globes, for that … Continue reading →

David Huggins is a trained artist of the primitivist/impressionist school who has but one subject — himself…and his lifetime of encounters with aliens. He’s particularly concerned with the conjugal visits, meetings that he insists were sexual in nature, and illustrates … Continue reading →

Pixar’s “Coco” gave the Disney division cause to celebrate again today, after a week of John Lasseter sexual harassment bad news. Not only is it a big (not huge, just big) box office hit. But the stage has been set … Continue reading →

Our heroes figure the central fact of their lives out long after we, the audience, do. Their epiphany comes at the tail end of a 27 minute prologue, that part of the film that unfolds before the title “Sundowners” flashes … Continue reading →

OK, so I’m a little late getting to this one. VERY late then, sure. But I meant to see it when it had a short run at the regional art cinema. Just never got around to it. So that counts, … Continue reading →

No great surprise that Pixar’s charming “Coco” is pulling in another $27 million on this weekend after Thanksgiving. Or that “Justice League” and “Thor” continue to rake in the cash just behind it. But A24’s Oscar contender, “The Disaster Artist,” … Continue reading →

Everybody has a dog story in the heist-gone-wrong thriller, “Bullet Head.” Even the dog. And these stories are told, mostly in smartly-handled, rhapsodic flashbacks, in Paul Solet’s tale of crooks trapped in a warehouse with a bloodied fighting pit bull … Continue reading →

If you’ve ever dial-hopped and stumbled across a poet reading her latest haiku, followed by an ancient cylinder recording of a singer from the very early 1900s, chased by an extended bebop jazz jam and rounded-off by by a live … Continue reading →