Monthly Archives: July 2020

“Relic” may be shrouded in gloom and fog, draped in the trappings of many a haunted house thriller. But its most revealing lines of dialogue can be appreciated by everyone, even those who don’t believe a house can be haunted. … Continue reading →

So if churches are getting payroll relief stimulus just like any other business, they should be subject to the same other times as any other business, right? That’s the logic applied to this suit. Churches aren’t “special.” They are like … Continue reading →

“Archive” is a slick, moody sci-fi mashup, a thoughtful thriller cobbled together from a lot of better films that came before it. The central premise — a scientist tries to engineer a robot to hold his wife’s “soul” — has … Continue reading →

This looks sun-kissed, romantic, and fun. And yes, I’m talking about the Fiat Spider that figures into a few clips here. The movie? It’s as close as most Americans will get to Italy and Tuscany any time soon. Lovely.

“First Cow” is a droll and scenic parable, a period piece about immigrants and American “enterprise” in the Old (Pacific North) West. A soft-spoken cast given to underplaying, a muddy, overcast setting in the beaver-trapping era on The Frontier and … Continue reading →

An extraordinary film with “Ordinary People (Ang Pamliya Ordinaryo)” as its title, this is the movie that announced Filipino filmmaker Eduardo Roy Jr. (“Lola Igna”) as a major talent. He takes us among the young, hustling homeless of Manila for … Continue reading →

“Parallax” is a mysterious, no-budget sci-fi story of identity and its manipulation, a movie that lives on mood and tone. Writer-director Michael Bachochin crosses the line from “cryptic and obscure” to “obscurist”early on. And when the film finally reveals its … Continue reading →

He won an Oscar for scoring Quentin Tarantino’s lesser send-up of the genre, “The Hateful Eight.” But the great Italian film composer Ennio Morricone made his mark on the cinema in the ’60s, scoring the Italian-made/Spanish-filmed Westerns of Sergio Leone … Continue reading →

“The F**k-It List?” What a crock of s**t. An “edgy” teen comedy bereft of laughs, wrapped in “life lessons” and nestled in privilege, it is as infuriating an entry in the “graduation” genre as Hollywood has produced. That’s an important … Continue reading →

If “The Tobacconist” didn’t put veteran Austrian TV director Nikolas Leytner into therapy, he must be a stronger soul than we mere mortals. He had a best-selling novel by Robert Seethaler as material, Vienna “between the World Wars” as his … Continue reading →