Monthly Archives: June 2020

There are funny lines, hilarious scenes and the occasional blast of gleeful, Eurovision excess rolled into “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga.” Sure, it’s an old school “high concept” star vehicle — a lot like many an earlier … Continue reading →

The disastrously disorganized American response to the COVID19 pandemic has me wondering if July is another write off month for the movies, sports, the works. Case numbers are skyrocketing in Florida and other states, a first wave that morphed into … Continue reading →

The sweeping title “Shanghai Triad” always promised a more epic film than the great Zhang Yimou gave us. But this intimate, ornate and melodramatic gangland tale has glories all its own. And while Zhang was the master of scale in … Continue reading →

August 7 this little stroll down music’s memory lane rolls out, a doc about the “alternative” to Rolling Stone, a rowdy little rag full of misfits, rudeness and cheerleading for many a band eschewed by Jann Wenner’s army of taste-setters. … Continue reading →

For me, a key moment in “Disclosure” TRans Lives On Screen,” the new Netflix documentary about transgender progress and trans representations in film and media, comes when trans actor Brian Michael Smith breaks down the woman-pretending-to-be-a-man-pretending-to-be-a-woman business that drives the … Continue reading →

Today’s entrée from our “Around the World with Netflix” buffet is a polished jewel from Chile that gives Jorge Garcia the rare shot at a starring role. Garcia is still best known for being on TV’s “Lost.” In the years … Continue reading →

Lucy Hale stars, and Mindy Cohn (Remember her?) plays the grownup in this July 17 college sex comedy/rom-com release.

  It seems like only yesterday that Ron Perlman was just a “Hellboy” twinkle in his director/pal Guillermo del Toro’s eye. Hell, it was only the day BEFORE yesterday that he was the soulful “Beast” on TV’s “Beauty and the … Continue reading →

“Money Machine” — a documentary about a mass shooting, money, police cover-ups and political opportunism — has a lot of pithy summations of its setting, “Sin City.” Las Vegas is “a town that knows how to make things disappear — … Continue reading →

  If there’s an overarching, blanket reaction that one can toss over the speculate fiction films of Christopher Münch, it might be “Yeah, and?” His debut feature and still most famous film, “The Hours and the Times,” was a thought-provoking … Continue reading →