Monthly Archives: February 2021

One name and artist stood out while watching the new HBO Black History Month doc, “Black Artists: In the Absence of Light.” Jacob Lawrence, who died in 2000, worked in abstract realism and created this vivid, almost animated impressions of … Continue reading →

Anja looks pained, stricken. And Tomas picks up on that as they take their coats off at a Christmas party. “If it gets tough, we’ll stick together,” he offers. It’s already gotten “tough.” And he isn’t just talking about this … Continue reading →

There’s a Hippocratic Oath that anybody tackling the romantic comedy about the mentally ill genre. You can be moon-eyed, optimistic, maybe a tad unrealistic. But “first, do no harm.” What, you didn’t realize this was a thing, a whole genre … Continue reading →

Whatever else you can say about the charming and intimate documentary that follows a “Stray” dog through the streets of Istanbul, it’s a rare piece of positive PR for a Middle Eastern country that never makes the news for something … Continue reading →

Henry Golding gives his most laid-back, natural screen performance in “Monsoon,” a melancholy Vietnamese travelogue and romance. The “Crazy Rich Asians” and “The Gentleman” star plays Kit, a Vietnamese expat raised in Britain who has returned to the homeland he … Continue reading →

One of America’s greatest writers, Tim O’Brien was well over a decade past his last published book when filmmaker Aaron Matthews started following him around, filming a documentary. O’Brien was into his ’70s, and stopped writing basically when his sons … Continue reading →

This production makes an almost instant hash of “The Girl on the Train,” a novel turned into a Hollywood thriller starring Emily Blunt a few years back. Heavy-handed, with hammy acting, silly and soap operatic, struggling to keep the plot … Continue reading →

It’s a Tom & Jerry cartoon, so we’re not splitting the atom here. Besides, I’m pretty sure Jerry split that sucker over Tom’s noggin back in the ’50s, when they were at MGM. The “Tom & Jerry” movie is, first … Continue reading →

Wise is the pop star who knows how to preserve a little mystery about themselves, even in the age of “over-sharing” and the microscope that is social media. Her most obsessed fans can find out bits of this and that. … Continue reading →

Yes, this looks as generically “contest” oriented as way too many martial arts thrillers and a lot of video game adaptations as well. But this R Rated run through the XBox or Playstation but not Wii of gamefan’s wet dreams … Continue reading →