Monthly Archives: June 2021

This Apple release comes to Apple TV Nov. 12. Anybody know the “true story” this is based on? A podcast inspired it.

Sylwia Zając, by any reasonable measure of this cliche, appears to “have it all.” She is young, beautiful, blonde and famous. And thanks to her choice of career, she’s insanely fit. That career — as an exercise guru and social … Continue reading →

Context is everything in taking in the oddest film in British director Michael Apted’s career, this early drama from the TV director (transitioning to film) who went on to director “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” a Bond film, movies in most every … Continue reading →

It’s hard to think of a movie, short or feature-length, a TV show or a play that, setting out to ridicule the critic profession, hasn’t landed a few sucker punches and body blows. Jon Lovitz, paunchy and animated for TV, … Continue reading →

Let’s coin a new phrase, one any movie lover will instantly “get” thanks to the state of cinema in the Netflix/Amazon/Hulu/Disney+ era. What’s a movie we’d describe as “streaming length?” It’s one that could stand editing, but run on and … Continue reading →

Nothing in all your or my years of watching movies prepared me for the utter glee Malcolm McDowell expresses the moment of his “big reveal” in the 1979 WWII action pic, “The Passage.” As an SS sadist chasing a runaway … Continue reading →

A reminder to parents who might consider checking out the suspenseful Canadian drama “Les Notres” in a cinema. It’s rude to throw things at the screen, and not great manners to shout at it. But variations of “Oh COME on!” … Continue reading →

“Gaia” is a South African trapped-in-the-forest thriller that trips up expectations more than enough to keep us interested. It’s an eco-horror tale where who and what we root for and against are flipped and flipped again as the story tales … Continue reading →

Kevin Hart waters down his ill-tempered, bug-eyed “little man with a foul mouth” shtick for “Fatherhood,” a perfectly-pleasant if predictable and right-on-the-cusp-of-maudlin single parent dramedy. Hey, that’s what happens when you team any edgy (OK, “edge-adjacent”) leading man with Paul … Continue reading →

Say what you like about “Lord of the Flies” and its many, many screen (and literary) imitations over the decades. That story, about the savagery barely civilized out of our young, even and especially the “well born” among them, still … Continue reading →