Monthly Archives: September 2021

The plea, suggestion and threat is all in a single line and one delivered on screen long after the viewer has thought it or even muttered it aloud. “Get some help, mate.” “Surge” is one man’s experiment in going full … Continue reading →

Sometime around 1990, Dave Stewart of Eurythmics contacted Robert Palmer — the shambolic music journalist, not the dapper rock star — and got him to be his tour guide through America’s blues country for a short stretch between legs of … Continue reading →

Lifelong friends and comic colleagues Whitney Call and Mallory Everton pair up again for “Stop and Go,” the most infectiously funny COVID road comedy ever. They co-wrote and co-star in a manic but never frantic tale of sisters dashing from … Continue reading →

This Oct. 5 release was directed by Thato Mwosa and stars Khai Taylor. Could be something.

“The Starling” is a forlorn parable about crippling grief and the tragedies in life that are beyond our control. It has an expertly comic cast and is based on a former “black list” script — one deemed a hot Hollywood … Continue reading →

This one has a familiar C movie face or two. French woman has her head shaved as a traitor, but is anything but. Nov.5, “Hell Hath no Fury” like a woman who had her head shaved.

In teen rom-coms, the “ugly duckling” is never, ever ugly. The “unpopular” kid is never repellent. And Mr. Right is always right under your nose. All you have to do is wax off the mustache to see him. “Confessions of … Continue reading →

“Birds of Paradise” is a dance film that begins with a jete and rises into an arabesque before collapsing in a heap, a parade of ballet drama cliches that winds up stuck at the barre. The set up — ballerinas … Continue reading →

“The Many Saints of Newark” could be the pilot to a new Sopranos TV series. It’s built that way, back-engineering stories, giving us the pre-mob don Tony Soprano and the family that made him a made man. It has a … Continue reading →

Everybody loves an underdog. Except, well, Yankees fans, Cowboys fans, Alabama and Clemson fans, Dookies. This Christmas, a pretty good cast that includes Oscar winner Anna Paquin and Dennis Quaid, with Zachary Levi in the title role, will bring “American … Continue reading →