Monthly Archives: July 2020

Filmmakers who take a shot at Southern Gothic these days have to take care to avoid the traps of tropes. Stories set in remote Southern towns, whose residents can seem frozen in time and wrapped in caricature, can come off … Continue reading →

Voltage pictures has this Oct. 2 romance with Josephine Langford and a fellow called Hero Fiennes Tiffin Redgrave Burton Olivier. Some of those, anyway.

  “Good men do bad things,” the speech begins, promisingly enough. “And bad men do good things.” And then, the punchline — “If I can’t stop a beast like him, what’s my purpose?” The bloke delivering those lines is “geezer” … Continue reading →

The Muppets return from that abortive “adult” mockumentary TV series Disney/ABC attempted a few years back with “Muppets Now,” a device-friendly Disney Plus series that won’t make anybody forget their 1970s heyday. Which is kind of the idea. The original … Continue reading →

Here we have the hit of the Beloit Film Festival, a twee little nothing of a British road comedy contrived to tickle, now and again, and nothing more. “Above the Clouds” finally earns wide release via the many content-starved free … Continue reading →

It helps to think of“xenophobia” being explained by Michael Constantine, the amusing Greco-proud poppa of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” “From the Greek,” he’d say, “‘xeno,’ which means ‘stranger,’ and ‘phobos,’ which means fear.” Fear of foreigners. Kind of an … Continue reading →

Let’s return now to the Baztan Valley, Navarre, the cloud-and-fog shrouded north of Spain, where detective Amaia Salazar must wrap up her toughest, most gruesome and most personal murder case. “Offering to the Storm” finishes of the “Baztan Trilogy” based … Continue reading →

Decades ago, I tracked down animator and director Chuck Jones to talk about his greatest creations on the occasion of Bugs Bunny’s “birthday,” the date of his first appearance on the big screen. “Bugs Bunny is how we see ourselves,” … Continue reading →

From a Zoom conference at Comic Con.

“Gerry” is one of those indie films whose reputation spread much further than its distribution. And that reputation explains how few people have seen it. It’s an interesting experiment in minimalism, but a willfully obscure, indulgent wank of a movie. … Continue reading →