Monthly Archives: January 2022

A hacker’s wife is taken, his government assassin dad may know something about it. Emile Hirsch and John Cusack star in this Feb. 18 C-movie, with Cusack eschewing his trademark black baseball cap. For once.

This Feb. thriller is about a grieving mom who thinks a neighbor’s child is her own, reincarnated Love that Riseborough.

The ghost of “Blade Runner” casts a long, gloomy shadow over sci-fi dystopias, all but defining what we think our hellscape future looks like — dark, rainy and overrun with attractive human-looking robots. They didn’t spend any money on the … Continue reading →

Sometimes your homework on a film takes you back to first principles. Is “American Gadfly” a documentary, or is it a mockumentary? The pitch from a publicist hired by the self-distributing filmmakers had me befuddled. Senator Mike Gravel? From Alaska? … Continue reading →

“Belle” is an ambitious anime fantasy with gorgeous, dreamy, CGI-assisted eye-candy images illustrating a somewhat cumbersome marriage of sci-fi and fairytale fantasy. It is grounded in a classic Japanese anime setting — a rural, mountainside town and high school. But … Continue reading →

It’s a stunning looking tale of a motherless teen girl who lives through her online avatar. I think. There’s a “Beauty and the Beast” parallel. The trailer is for the newly-dubbed feature film, but I’m watching the subtitled version. Because. … Continue reading →

The most complete exhibition ever of Dylan as visual artist shows him a sort of imitation  Edward Hopper of Hibbing, with a heavy dose of Van Gogh and a hint of late period Winslow Homer. This Bob Dylan the Visual … Continue reading →

Jared Leto’s “Morbius” pulled out of January today. Just three major titles are set to open wide on Jan. thanks to the latest unvaccinated spike in the pandemic. “The 355” this week, “Redeeming Love” 1/21 and “Scream” (1/14) are all … Continue reading →

If there’s a better recent piece of cinematic plot problem-solving than the compact thriller “See for Me,” I must’ve missed it. This tight, tense and oh-so-logical home invasion tale brings “Wait Until Dark” into the cell phone era, with suspense … Continue reading →

The South African CGI animation house Triggerfish (“Zambezia”) makes its Netflix debut with “Seal Team,” an animated action comedy about seals taught to fight back against “ravenous seal-eating sharks” by a grizzled HMMF (Hydro-Marine-Military-Force) trained walrus We see seals not … Continue reading →