Monthly Archives: November 2018

I wish to Blitzen Universal would leave “The Grinch” alone. The 1966 TV special was compact perfection, a minor masterpiece to remember legendary animation director Chuck Jones by. You’re never going to improve on having Boris Karloff as your kindly-spooky-sweet … Continue reading →

The safest way to review the new “Suspiria” is to remember the old “Suspiria” (1977) and bow out with an “It’s not really my thing.” Cryptic, creepy, sexually asexual, gory and grotesque, it’s Reason One to back away — carefully, … Continue reading →

  So many road trip comedies and only one lifetime to get through them all. It’s a conundrum, a dilemma for anybody who cherishes the genre as much as I do. On a sliding scale, “The Long Dumb Road” is … Continue reading →

  Seems like just yesterday that Keke Palmer was making her big screen lead debut in “Akeelah and the Bee,” playing a tween who masters spelling bees with the help of mentor Laurence Fishburne. Here she is, a dozen years … Continue reading →

As ER nurse Helen Sterling, Susan Sarandon has to be cagey with her emotions, never giving in to false hope or personal connection to the daily onslaught of the dead and the dying, and those who survive them. A nurse … Continue reading →

I remember like it was only this afternoon — which it was — that moment when the well-cast, realistic and sometimes moving mom’s-got-dementia drama, “What They Had,” goes straight off the rails. It comes after daughter Bridget (Hilary Swank) has … Continue reading →

It’s not the editor, but the editing strategy that undermines “Beautiful Boy.” This sensitive retelling of the true story of journalist David Sheff and his son Nic, a drug addict whose crystal meth mania became two books — one written … Continue reading →

“The Nursery Man” is a period piece about a house haunted by somebody glimpsed by the grownups, but whom the children have every reason to fear. So no, we’re not going to be disappointed that this isn’t garden variety horror, … Continue reading →

Sure, it’s got food. Lots of it. It’s postcard pretty rural Italy, after all. Even homophobes have to eat. Seems dated, by US standards. But “coming out” in Catholic-Berlusconi Italy was always going to be dicy. “My Big Gay Italian … Continue reading →

Here’s how open “Hollywood’s Worst-Kept Secret” was. Earlier in my career working for newspapers in Tennessee, North Carolina and Florida, I’d hit several film festivals a year, including New York. I’d do junket weekends, chatting up the stars of this … Continue reading →