Monthly Archives: June 2020

As moving and lovely as the Oscar-winning film biography “Walk the Line” was, we could tell, just watching it, that there was one part of the story that nobody involved was getting right. And we could tell the filmmakers knew … Continue reading →

Well, maybe we don’t all have as much time to kill as we did a month or three ago. A lot of people are going back to work, after all. So two and a half hours of a dawdling wank … Continue reading →

The problem with “Mr. Topaz” is underlined, under-scored and trumpeted at approximately one hour in to this “lost” Peter Sellers comedy. That’s when Sellers’ “Pink Panther” foil, Herbert Lom bursts on the screen, jolts the lethargic back to life and … Continue reading →

The best of the “bingeworthy” dramas in this, the golden age of streaming, are true “limited series.” They’re the TV equivalent of a good genre novel, a “page turner.” They give you a beginning, a layered, ever-more-revealing, twisty middle, and … Continue reading →

Some movies lay it all out there, up front. Jam everything they’re about into an opening scene and force the viewer to decide, “Nope” or “Let’s see where they’re going with this. It’s a great strategy for “film festival” movies, … Continue reading →

Pretty young performers struggle to get that first break in The Big City in “High Strung Free Dance,” a Broadway music and dance melodrama that, like its predecessor, “High Strung,” has most of its edge rubbed off. This is a … Continue reading →

He plays the old guy who let’s the kids get into underground brawling in this one.

A man loses his wife and daughter in a car crash and seeks solace on his Ducati Scrambler X riding the mountains, beaches and deserts of California in the somber, largely dialogue and incident-free “A Thousand Miles Behind.” I liked … Continue reading →

Never have I ever wanted to reach through a screen and give a screenwriter a good, hard “What the hell is the MATTER with you?” shaking. Until “The Dinner Party.” An exasperatingly amateur and funereal “Satanic ritual sacrifice” horror outing, … Continue reading →

A filmmaker creates an imaginary letter to his daughter in dreaming of a world where best current practices and technology are applied to solve climate change in “2040,” an almost tearfully optimistic take on a subject that has long lived … Continue reading →