Monthly Archives: July 2022

The trailers to the documentary “Fire of Love” play up the weirdness, the “obsession” of the husband and wife French vulcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft, and suggest that they were dilletantes who died doing something they loved but perhaps didn’t … Continue reading →

A quick shout out here to the unheralded hero of many a movie, the casting director. That person is responsible for populating the background faces in group scenes, and in bringing in the right folks for smaller supporting roles. Not … Continue reading →

“Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris” is so much bubbly, frothy fun that it makes you wonder how “feel good movies” ever got a bad name. Director Anthony Fabian and a team of co-writers make this glorious, feather-light period piece effortlessly … Continue reading →

The DVD cover is much more lascivious than the documentary it contains, or the tepid movie that inspired it, and apparently a generation of South American filmmakers who saw it and thought, “I can do that.” That’s what the Spanish … Continue reading →

A Spanish Civil War action comedy with nationalist fascists, anti-fascists, Nazis and zombies, “Valley of the Dead” is the epitome of “high concept,” a movie so simple you can sum up its plot and/or potential appeal in a single line. … Continue reading →

What a tricky, twisted thriller in a minor key “Gone in the Night” turns out to be. Well-cast and toying with a tetchy, testy subtext, its virtues tend to suck the life right out of its shortcomings. Ostensibly about an … Continue reading →

I’m sure fans of the character-actor/gourmand Stanley Tucci can be forgiven for starting his new food-and-film memoir by flipping back to the 20th and final chapter to the “news hook” of the book. He had a mid-COVID battle with cancer, … Continue reading →

A couple of old friends — one of whom never outgrew their laser tag champions past — are all that stand between Norway and the light-sensitive alien zombies who would infect the country, from fjord to shining fjord, in “Blasted.” … Continue reading →

You don’t need to wait for the next season of “The Handmaid’s Tale” or the future it foretells to get a taste of what the global right wing patriarchy has in mind for women. Plunge into the “honor killing” Islamic … Continue reading →

A solid, straightforward narrative — heavy on the history, light in melodrama — is the best recommendation for “A Call to Spy,” a true story of World War II and an American woman who joined British agents to do perform … Continue reading →