Monthly Archives: September 2018

  “Cruise” is a coming-of-age melodrama seemingly displaced in time. It’s a car culture summer romance built around transportation, sex and petty theft and set to the soundtrack of what’s playing on everybody’s car radio — an “American Graffiti” parked … Continue reading →

    Long before his death in 2009, the painter Andrew Wyeth had to deal with “dead white male” dismissals. A painter of “extreme realism,” whose skill matched his talents, and whose subtlety got lost in mass popularity, high priced … Continue reading →

Sleep Paralysis, a sort of paralyzing nightmare, is a real phenomenon that affects a very large portion of the population, a graphic at the beginning of “Mara” tells us. And historically, people in various cultures over the ages have thought … Continue reading →

The silly, chaste musicals of Bollywood could not be further removed from “Garbage,” a tedious, tawdry and torturous take on India’s gender wars from the director who bills himself as “Q.” Qaushiq Mukherjee has written and directed a gruesome and … Continue reading →

This nerdy doc from Cristina Constantini and Darren Foster opens in limited release Sept. 14. Perfect time for something like this, I must say.

In art, the story of the artist, their “journey,” trials and narrative can often overwhelm the work itself. That was never going to happen to Yayoi Kusama. She might be an art product of wartime Japan, a publicity hungry provocateur … Continue reading →

More clever than funny, “The Laws of Thermodynamics” is a feature length Spanish language (Catalan?) “Big Bang Theory,” without the punchlines, rimshots and rhythms of a sitcom. A lovelorn astrophysics grad student falls for an “It” girl model in Barcelona, … Continue reading →

She’s played a prima ballerina fated to be “The Black Swan,” why not a pop star of the Gaga/Xtina variety? “Vox Lux” hasn’t got a lot of info floating around about it. Just Portman replacing Rooney Mara in the lead … Continue reading →

Amandla Stenberg is the biracial/looks black teen trapped in Hitler Youth era Germany in this drama, also starring Abbie Cornish. “Where Hands Touch” would have to be a true story or inspired by one, right? Germany’s official hatred of anybody … Continue reading →