Monthly Archives: January 2022

A pasty-faced, red ball-capped, pickup truck-driving Tennessean dumps a truckload of red rubber balls into a river, drives down the road, removes a sniper rifle with a Confederate flag sticker on it, and pops those calls from a great distance … Continue reading →

A mystery torn from the pages of Scandinavian history, “Margrete: Queen of the North” becomes a taut and tense tale in the hands of Danish director Charlotte Sieling. The filmmaker takes us back to an age when the mechanical clock … Continue reading →

You’re allowed to be confused by what unfolds in the mix-and-match Italian romance “Four to Dinner.” Not that you need my permission. If you’ve watched it, you got there all on your own. It’s a thought exercise tale about two … Continue reading →

The lone feature film by American documentarian James Blue is a fascinating cinematic time capsule, a glimpse at the last days of French colonial Algeria. As you might expect from a filmmaker who worked mostly on non-fiction films, it’s a … Continue reading →

A no-name cast, emptied-out settings, a sort of unstuck in time plot. This one comes our way Feb. 11.

Today’s tale of good actors making horrible choices is “American Night,” an Italian-made American mob war/art swindling debacle that lured Jonathan Rhys Myers, Paz Vega, Emile Hirsch, Jeremy Piven and Michael Madsen with the promise of a working vacation in … Continue reading →

Sidney Poitier, an Oscar winning icon of the cinema whose every early screen appearance was a dignified, fiery and eloquent appeal for equal rights and civil rights, and whose later years saw him as an elder statesman, an eminence grise … Continue reading →

“The Wasteland” or “The Beast (El páramo)” as it was originally-titled, is a Spanish period piece that inverts that classic horror trope of a mother doing anything to save her child from “evil.” In a remote corner of 19th century … Continue reading →

Sort of a creature feature of the “Don’t TOUCH that” school. “Old Strangers” releases Jan. 11.

One of those performances you just lose yourself in carries off “June Again,” a sweet and sentimental portrait of dementia, and the “paradoxical lucidity” that gives some sufferers a short respite from the memories, manners, skills and knowledge that disease … Continue reading →