Monthly Archives: September 2019

It’s a documentary about a little girl found hanging from a swing set in rural North Carolina in 2014. Accident or a modern day lynching? Jacqueline Olive’s award winner opens in limited release Sept. 20.

It’s the endless costume changes, the ornate extravagance, the pastoral idylls and the Christmas Village quaintness of it all. There’s the jewelry, the flapper bangs, the scrubbing, trimming, boiling, polishing and smug sub-minimum wage satisfaction of the servant classes at … Continue reading →

The dire state of water here on the Big Blue Marble, or what happens when the ice melts.

Years ago, I had a lunch interview with the journalist/screenwriter Mark Boal (“The Hurt Locker”) as he passed through town promoting his second film with Kathryn Bigelow, the Hunt for Bin Laden epic “Zero Dark Thirty.” The conversation wrapped up … Continue reading →

The comic Jim Gaffigan takes a deep dive into the dark side with “American Dreamer,” an almost relentlessly downbeat character study in despair. It’s a thriller with no hero, just a funnyman who tosses aside his amusing baggage even when … Continue reading →

A “big city” cop comes home to visit her dying father and is drawn into a mystery that dates from her high school days in “HELLmington,” a moody, well-acted but generally inconsequential thriller in the occult subgenre. If it holds … Continue reading →

A big hit at Cannes an October release from A24. Was this the performance that made Pattinson an apt choice as the next brooding Dark Knight?

Laurence Fishburne is a prison warden haunted by the past, forced to deal with flashbacks to his past sins as his infamous place of work is about to be imploded in “Imprisoned,” a tale set and filmed in Puerto Rico. … Continue reading →

Ewan M. is “Danny doesn’t live here, Mrs. Torrance,” all grown up. Rebecca Ferguson, Jacob Tremblay, Cliff Curtis and Bruce Greenwood are in this Nov. 8 thriller.

Oscar winner Brie Larson, Tim Blake Nelson a Andrene Watts-Hammond are the other faces in this Oscar contender about justice down South. It’s based on a true story and could be every bit as moving as its trailer.