Monthly Archives: May 2022

Ang Lee would go on to Oscar winning glory, helming “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “Broke back Mountain.” But his debut feature was a touching and sometimes amusing fish-out-of-water story about an old widower trying to fit in with his … Continue reading →

Bad news/good news time. Bad news, Justin Lin finally decided the high price of (Vin) Diesel was reason enough to bail out of the “Fast and Furious” franchise. He quit “Fast X.” Good news, Louis Leterrier, director of the tighter, … Continue reading →

This engrossing drama about bullying and its impact not just on the boy directly subject to it, but to his sister, stay at home dad, family and a school bureaucracy helpless to handle it has a lot to offer…and subtitles. … Continue reading →

If there’s one thing the pandemic lockdown taught us, it’s that some filmmakers had ideas that turn the restrictions and limitations of that time into dramatic scenarios. “Glimpse” combines disparate, isolated characters, hidden camera CCTV footage and rising paranoia about … Continue reading →

The great thing about Bogart was that he never lost that nasty edge that gave him a career, even as he transitioned from heavies to leading men. There’s a hint of Fred C. Dobbs, Duke Mantee and Roy Earle in … Continue reading →

“Petite Maman” is a memory play for children, a children’s fantasy for grown-ups. The latest film from Céline Sciamma, who gave us the Oscar-winning “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” is an understated and distinctly adult look at childhood, death … Continue reading →

What a tin-eared foot-fault of a comedy “40-Love” is. Built around ineptly sketched-in characters not saved by the actors playing them, stumbling through scene after illogical and painfully-unfunny-but-meant-to-be-funny scenes, the number of actual laughs it produces you can count on … Continue reading →

Hollywood’s long affair with James A. Michener, the World War II Navy veteran whose “Tales of the South Pacific” launched a Pulitzer-prize winning literary career, began with a sort of proof-of-concept film. Long before the musical “South Pacific,” United Artists, … Continue reading →

“In a New York Minute” is a film anthology that tells three loosely-connected stories about the female Chinese-American experience in New York. It’s a melodrama that traffics in diaspora generalizations that aren’t necessarily the most flattering, and whose messaging and … Continue reading →

The Mexican “40 Years Young (Cuarentones)” is a midlife crisis romantic dramedy that’s so slow that I had to check to make sure Netflix wasn’t experiencing screen-freeze. Its 81 drab minutes pass by like a long, labored comic death rattle. … Continue reading →