Monthly Archives: July 2022

Call me old fashioned, but the last thing I want in a sex comedy is “timid” and “coy.” “How to Please a Woman” is an airless, laughless romantic “romp” from down under about a woman who takes over a failed … Continue reading →

My heart goes out to any aspiring filmmaker who takes a shot at making a Western with no money. All horror takes is a bit of makeup, some fake blood and — in the case of a cheap zombie movie … Continue reading →

Adrift, unable to hold a job, maladjusted and arrested in her development. Maybe what Audrey needs is for somebody to adopt her. This film festival darling isn’t the comedy which that set up suggests. It hunts at something more existential … Continue reading →

Throwing in a mewling infant is a bit much. Granted, I was far enough into the sentimental Spanish coming-of-age melodrama that I thought, “You can’t do a knockoff of ‘Stand By Me’ without a body,” when lo and behold one … Continue reading →

Katie Holmes‘ “Alone Together” is the latest, almost certainly not the last of the “pandemic makes strange bedfellows” dramas and romances inspired by and filmed during lockdown. Tenderly-conceived, tastefully-directed, handsomely-mounted and prestigiously-cast, its a drama that runs up against the … Continue reading →

Carol Burnett and Vicki Lawrence had “Mama’s Family,” Tyler Perry had “Madea.” Brit comic actress Catherine Tate’s “Nan,” a character from her self-titled sketch comedy series, is pitched somewhere in between, a crude and coarse vulgarian who must be pushing … Continue reading →

The dreamy, scenic and sweet “Doom of Love” has the look and feel of something truly novel — a Turkish slacker romance. But this Around the World with Netflix bauble about a young man cast adrift when his start-up obituary … Continue reading →

A huge humpbacked steamer trunk takes second billing in “The Bride in the Box,” a new horror film. As I once spent a few years buying, restoring and re-selling such trunks, I was keen to see any movie that might … Continue reading →

A single set sci-fi/psychological “experiment” take, testing its subjects in a white on white “cage.” Aug. 19, things get messy in “The Immaculate Room.”

Today’s Around the World with Netflix trip is a jumbled, over-reaching thriller from Egypt creatively-titled “The Crime.” A sort of death-bed confessional/morality tale that an old man tells of his murderous past, it shows more ambition than skill in its … Continue reading →