Monthly Archives: March 2022

The 31st Florida Film Festival announced its lineup tonight — ten days, some 160 films, filmmaker panels, parties, many venues, many movies, much much fun, as always. After losing a year to the pandemic and coming back in an altered, … Continue reading →

In the thriller “Tethered,” a little blind boy is raised by his parents to live self-sufficient and alone in the woods, keeping himself tied, by rope, to the home he makes his way back to each day after checking his … Continue reading →

No, I get no kickbacks from posting this. No sample bottles to make me give up Bombay Sapphire. Dammit. But the ads are cute.

British filmmaker Adrian Lyne made a name for himself in the ’80s and ’90s thanks to lurid thrillers (“Fatal Attraction,” “Indecent Proposal,” “Lolita”) that put the “sexually” in “sexually-charged” and “sexual taboo.” He didn’t make a lot of movies, but … Continue reading →

Mental health “comedies” are a problematic genre, even when the film in question is an “Around the World with Netflix” rom-com from Italy. “Marilyn’s Eyes” proves that even Italy’s more old-fashioned sense of who and what we can laugh at … Continue reading →

Four and a half minutes into “Panama,” a spy games/Contra War thriller set just before the U.S. invasion of Noriegaland in 1989, I’m thinking “JAYZUS, that’s a lot of producer credits.” It seems like a hundred (only 30something) of these … Continue reading →

“The Hater” is a light political satire struggling to escape from a somewhat cumbersome big screen comedy, a classic 85 minute movie not-quite-smothered inside a 108 minute one. It has too many characters to do justice to, even at that … Continue reading →

As subtle as a cudgel, and almost as artful, “Unsilenced” is a Chinese polemic against Chinese one-party-state suppression of the Falun Gong religious and spiritual exercise movement. Sorry if I’m not characterizing this “religion” as accurately as I might, or … Continue reading →

His gestures are economical and spare. Oscar winner Mark Rylance has his own particular interpretation of “underplaying,” turning a role into a life being lived in the moment on the screen. His melodious line readings, taking care with every syllable, … Continue reading →