Monthly Archives: December 2021

The last of the three incredibly funny women who made “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” legendarily hilarious has died. The only woman who could have stolen Ryan Reynolds away from Sandra Bullock is gone. A brassy broad who transitioned into … Continue reading →

The thing that sticks in the memory is that jaunty Elmer Bernstein (with lyrics by Erskine Caldwell?) title tune. “Diggin’ in the moonlight, diggin’ in the sun,….Diggin’ in the ground till the diggin’ was done — Come over to God’s … Continue reading →

I get through a lot of Spanish language cinema in pursuit of something out of the ordinary in my “Around the World With Netflix” browsing. And as I do, one opening credit always gets my attention and raises my hopes. … Continue reading →

The loveable old coot screen image that Walter Brennan took to his grave tended to gloss-over his wonderfully villainous turns over the years. A prototype for what Hollywood would come to revere as “a character actor,” he won three Oscars, … Continue reading →

Simon Rex? Sorry mate, that sounds like a porn star’s name. Not that this can’t be put to good use,. Rex, who first gained notice on TV’s “Felicity” back in the last millennium, plays an aging not-exactly-a-household name porn actor … Continue reading →

“Star Wars” fans should have figured out long ago that Disney wasn’t going to shut down the assembly line for “new content” in this timeworn “galaxy far far away.” Not until someone — ANYone — said, “All right, that’s enough” … Continue reading →

R. Patts and Zoe K., with Andy Serkis playing a different sort of Alfred. Love the mayhem of it all. The comic book noir “Bat” stuff is pretty played, but not played-out. Peter Sarsgaard, Colin Farrell, Paul Dano and the … Continue reading →

There are a few elements of writer-director Philip Yuryev’s “The Whaler Boy” that are off-putting enough to warrant addressing them straight off. It opens with a luridly-detailed behind-the-scenes look at an online sex-chat brothel, a scene that goes on longer … Continue reading →

Here’s one last “Around the World with Netflix” holiday offering for 2021. Better yet, think of “1000 Miles from Christmas” as the first holiday film of 2022. Let’s get an early start — 360 days before Christmas — on the … Continue reading →

“Three Came Home” is a fascinating curio from a Hollywood and America on the cusp of change. This 1951 POW drama was the first to cover ground that “A Town Like Alice,” the movie and later TV series, the series … Continue reading →