Monthly Archives: August 2020

“The Driftless Area” is as good a representation of Anton Yelchin’s acting and role selection as you’re going to find. A mystical, moody and cryptic dramatic thriller with wry touches, it was “Indie” with capital “I,” so obscure as to … Continue reading →

“Around the Sun” is a simple, talky two-hander — just two actors, a lovely location, a little charm and lots and lots of words.  It’s a courtship of the mind with dashes of wit, dollops of melodrama and drops of … Continue reading →

I love the way director Martín Hodara folds his flashbacks, seamlessly, into the fictive present in “Black Snow.” “Nieve Negra,” as it is titled in Spanish, is another polished, stark thriller from Argentina, and the feature directing debut from this … Continue reading →

Say this for “Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies.” It’s thorough, almost academic textbook/video-accompanying-a-film-studies-class broad in its scope. The documentary’s two hours and nine minutes take us from the first naked moving images of the human body to … Continue reading →

It seems like ancient history, now. In a lot a ways, it is. There was a summer roiled by a murder of a black man, one that laid bare the open wound of American violence and racism long before this … Continue reading →

This one streams Aug. 25. Looks compelling — mental disorders among scientists and gamblers aren’t rare — and maybe annoying. “Dude, get up from the poker table and CURE this already.”

What an odd duck of a doc “Big Fur” is. But that just means director Dan Wayne has gotten damned close to his subject. Alberta, Canada taxidermist, Roy Orbison impersonator and Bigfoot believer Ken Walker is a veritable rural Renaissance … Continue reading →

A Netflix series about the first mission to Mars, with a multinational crew, perilous obstacles and the cost to those back home. Josh Charles also stars in this Sept. 4 Netflix release.

A throwback B-movie about Tommies trying to make it to the evac zone, where Kenneth Branagh, the Royal Navy and “The Little Ships” could whisk them to safety. Look for “Behind the Line: Escape to Dunkirk” Aug. 17.

  “The Pool” is terror at its most primal, a simple Thai thriller that’s complex in its simplicity. The situation? A guy finds himself trapped in a deep, now-drained and abandoned Olympic sized swimming pool. There is no ladder to … Continue reading →