Monthly Archives: December 2020

It’s a little “Predator,” a bit of “Robocop” and a LOT “Terminator” — metal mercenaries of the not-too-distant future hit a Third World trouble spot. Mayhem ensues.

“Living well,” they say, “is the best revenge.” But what would you call living on — outlasting your enemies and loved ones, all your peers, outliving everything except for your memories? “Frau Stern” is about to turn 90. She has … Continue reading →

The signs are all there — a lurid underworld filled with over-the-top violent “villains,” thick London accents, bits of rhyming and pithy one-liners flung about by characters named Rawbone, Hard Eight, Tick Tock and “Not Now, Nigel.” That punchdrunk title? … Continue reading →

“The Stand-In” has the plot of what could have a Drew Barrymore of twenty years ago. She plays a comic actress, burned out and strung out, over the whole showbiz thing and ready to stop being a celebrity. And she … Continue reading →

A modern riff on Jane Austen? Alicia Witt, Shane McRae, Bebe Neuwirth, Li Jun Li, Daniella Pineda and Liza Lapira do a version of my favorite Austen novel, the less-filmed (Ciaran Hinds co-starred in the definitive version), playing up “Persuasion” … Continue reading →

Steve McQueen’s landmark “Small Axe” series, about the activist years of greater London’s West Indian diaspora, ends up an upbeat yet dramatically thinner and less satisfying than you’d hope note with “Education.” The finale, set in the early ’70s, when … Continue reading →

Truth be told, I could have done without the German holiday line-dancing in the finale. There are plenty of times co-writer/director Detlev Buck (“Hands off Mississippi”) tosses a few too many balls in the air — characters to follow, subtexts … Continue reading →

In these troubled times, which are looking more and more like End Times for Hollywood and movies in theaters, it’s heartening to realize that whatever dies, indie cinema will endure. Movies like “The Planters” pretty much guarantee that. An insistently … Continue reading →

The filmmakers who brought us “The Secret of Kells” and “Song of the Sea” bring another Irish myth to vibrant, animated life in “Wolfwalkers,” an environmental fable about spirits who protect the forests from the Ruin of Man. The vivid, … Continue reading →

One of the cleverest touches of “Coded Bias,” the new film from documentarian Shalini Kantayya (“Catching the Sun”) is the faces we see and the voices she chose to give a platform to. The film — about the destructive biases … Continue reading →