Monthly Archives: March 2022

The 2020 Czech drama “Servants (Sluzobníci)” could not be a more timely home streaming release, it being a drama set not long after the 1968 Warsaw Pact, aka “Soviet Union” aka “Russian” invasion, “regime change” and occupation of Czechoslovakia. Director … Continue reading →

A practice engrained by years in newspapers has me avoiding the use of staged/photoshopped promotional photos for reviews of films. But this image so perfectly encapsulates the Japanese weeper romance “Love Like the Falling Petals,” that avoiding it wouldn’t be … Continue reading →

In a streaming universe where whole channels are devoted to music documentaries, it’s inevitable that almost any band you an think of, any band anybody cares about, is going to merit a film telling their story. Many of these films … Continue reading →

A mushroom expert bonds with a runaway he meets in the woods collecting mushrooms in “The Issue with Elvis,” a milder-than-mild-mannered family drama set in wild, wonderful West Virginia. The drama is low-key/low-stakes, the pace is leisurely and the dialogue … Continue reading →

Film and the culture it reflects tends towards gross oversimplifications. When a terrible crime happens, we want it explained. We want to know what “triggered” this person, what made them “finally snap.” The truth is always muddier, more complicated. Sometimes, … Continue reading →

Downbeat, infuriating, reluctant to give up its mystery and illogical and anticlimactic by its finale, “Compartment No. 6” parks us in a Russian train for a long journey from Moscow to Murmansk with two intriguingly mismatched traveling companions. It might … Continue reading →

Of all the projects Netflix has given great directors the money to film — many of them Oscar-nominated, some of them even bringing master filmmakers like Jane Campion back to the mainstream — tossing money to Richard Linklater got them … Continue reading →

This story of the Great Brit who boxed her way to glory — at the 2012 London games, no less — opens April 5.

A critic-friend I’ve sat on several film festival panels with over the years once explained to a questioner from the audience the difference between critics and filmgoers. Most movie fans only go to films that interest them, genres, franchises, etc. … Continue reading →

“X” doesn’t reinvent one of the most popular, time-tested horror genres so much as breathe a little life into it. That “promiscuous young folks go slumming in rural America and get themselves slaughtered” plot feels seriously worn-out. But writer-director Ti … Continue reading →