Monthly Archives: November 2021

The debut feature from writer-director Bennet De Brabandere was titled “Cherrypicker” for a while and renamed “Ankle Biters” for release. But while he cleverly-retitled this story of a hockey goon who runs afoul of his girlfriend’s four 7-and-under daughters, he … Continue reading →

Writer, wit and craftsman, science fiction icon and cultural iconoclast, Kurt Vonnegut‘s long and storied career saw him climb from penny-pinching obscurity to celebrity, wealth and fame, a novelist whose every book remains in print and whose pithiest remarks have … Continue reading →

Today’s “Around the World with Netflix” outing is a gritty, suspenseful Brazilian drama about human trafficking and what the trafficked do at the end of that ugly road. Alexandre Moratto’s “7 Prisoners” takes us for a ride — the same … Continue reading →

A sexy period piece (1924) with Oscar winners Olivia Colman and Colin Firth as the employers who are away leaving Odessa Young to carry on with Josh O’Connor. It’s based on a Graham Swift novel, and features one other Oscar … Continue reading →

Say what you want, but I LIKE this version of Ellie Kemper. The ever-sweetly-smiling plucky ditz of “The Office” and “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” goes kind of, well, bad-ass for “Home Sweet Home Alone.” And that’s fun because in this … Continue reading →

Wherever film satire has traveled in the past half century, there’s something seriously retrograde in Rada Jude’s film festival darling “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn.” I wracked my memory banks while watching it, trying to summon up a film … Continue reading →

In a film era when too many filmmakers figure computer animation is the only way to make “Clifford” come to life, when “101 Digital Dalmatians” seems cheaper, when the only way to get Harrison Ford cto work with a dog … Continue reading →

I don’t know, the pushback Kidman is getting over her turn as the “off camera” Lucille Ball in this biopic seems to miss the point. Whatever her film career was before marriage and TV made her and her husband famous, … Continue reading →

Jesse Metcalf , Chad Michael Murray (and was that Shannon Doherty?) star in this Dec. 17 release.

Maybe your first thought when People Magazine named Paul Rudd its “Sexiest Man Alive,” was “Say what?” OK. Maybe it was your second thought, after “People’s still around? And doing the ‘sexiest man’ thing?” The reason, thanks to “recency bias,” … Continue reading →