Yearly Archives: 2023

It sometimes seemed, in the long years of trials, deflections and evasions that comprised the last days of Chile’s murderous looter and dictator Augusto Pinochet, that the monstrous bastard would never die. A “normalized” and “accepted” despot with a tidier … Continue reading →

It’s hard to work up much enthusiasm — or any at all — for “Little Jar,” a limited-cast/couple of settings COVID comedy that comes too late to cash in on “Look at the movie they got made despite restrictions” and … Continue reading →

The standard rule of thumb for films that appeal to a more mature audience is that it takes that crowd a few weeks to get around to catching up with a new movie aimed their way. Thursday night “previews” have … Continue reading →

Reshoots, delays, less Amber Heard, maybe no Aquaman at all in James Gunn’s vision for DC comics movies down the road. In any event, here’s the sequel now slated for a few days just before Christmas.

This Rodrigo Moreno thriller opens in late October in New York and LA and stars Daniel Eliás and Esteban Bigliardi as an Argentinian bank employee who does the crime and confesses to do the time, and the pal he stashes … Continue reading →

When streaming was still new, I had a notion that it might be the perfect place for movies and filmmakers who’d rarely fill-four-corners of a theater with their work, the creators of romances, dramas and thrillers on a smaller scale. … Continue reading →

It takes a good 70 minutes for Danish filmmaker Bille August’s period piece “Ehrengard: The Art of Seduction,” to get through its talk-talk-talk opening acts, on its feet and find its fun and its purpose. It’s a 94 minute film, … Continue reading →

Payne and his “Sideways” star/muse take us to a boarding school over the winter holiday of 1970, a student whose parents don’t seem to have time for him, a teacher (Giamatti) no one likes and a cook (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) … Continue reading →

Vampires, lest we forget, are very old. How old? Grandma’s Consumer Cellular flip-phone-using old. Some of them could stand to do some situps. And given their druthers, when they “vant to drink your blood,” they’d prefer to serve it to … Continue reading →

The time-honored “summer camp” kids comedy earns a most innocuous treatment with “Camp Hideout,” an almost faith-based take on a subject that “Meatballs,” “Ernest Goes to Camp,” an “Addams Family” movie and many others got to before it, almost always … Continue reading →