Monthly Archives: October 2020

Of all the things necessary to make a screen thriller work, “urgency” has to rank at the top of the list. That’s conveyed via direction, editing, sometimes a pulse-pounding score, but most importantly in a script that expresses high stakes … Continue reading →

Netflix has a real prestige picture or three this holiday season. This adaptation of the room reflective, reactionary and some say self righteous redneck memoir by J. Vance has a Glenn Close Oscar nomination in its DNA.

Has Milla ever made a movie with Nic Cage? THERE’s a pitch. This one releases/streams/drive-ins what have you on Dec. 30.

God, we’ve missed THIS Nicolas Cage. Martial Arts/sci-fi mashup Nic. Bugeyed Nic. Craaaaaaazyy Nic. With Rick Yune, Frank Grillo, Tony Jaa and Marie Avgeropoulos. Nov. 20. Rick Yune, Frank Grillo

The father wants to get his kid into the exclusive Catholic school that will give his little boy the best chance at a brighter future. And it’s not going well. The admissions officer asks him a question in code. “What … Continue reading →

Screenwriter Jeffrey Reddick mainlined something universal with his script, “Final Destination.” A film that launched a franchise, it tapped into that teen tendency to feel immortal and the conspiracy buff in us all that likes to see “coincidences” as part … Continue reading →

What overwhelms you about David Lean’s second most famous Dickens adaptation is the sense of hunger that washes off the screen and erases any sense of “period piece” about it. “Oliver Twist” makes hunger so timeless that the 19th century … Continue reading →

The Swiss LSD activist Joannna Harcourt-Smith, longtime love and partner in Psychedelics of Dr. Timothy Leary and the subject of this film, just died.

Gina Gershon, as the empress of MMA fight promoters, and Elijah Baker as a desperate personal manager to a fighter needing a comeback are the two performers who merit the label “actors” in “Cagefighter: Worlds Collide,” a stupidly-plotted collection of … Continue reading →

It’s not utter madness to reset American novelist Jack London’s overtly political novel “Martin Eden” in the Red Epoch Italy of the 1960s. The title character (Luca Marinelli of TV’s “Trust”) rants about “individualism” and “socialism” and “capitalism” as a … Continue reading →