Yearly Archives: 2023

An unfortunate aesthetic and technical choice — an attempt to replicate a comic book dot-matrix printing style — rendered the first animated “Spider-Man/Spiderverse” outing painful for some to watch, me among them. It was literally headache-inducing, even without the multi-verse … Continue reading →

June 9, a little “Dark Crystal,” a bit of “Narnia,” a taste of “The Never Ending Story,” and a lot of reptilian CGI critters

I found an AMC “classic” (an old theater where they don’t fix that which is broken) near me and a matinee showing of comic Bert Kreischer’s “The Machine” that cost me a whopping $5.19. No, I’m not asking for my … Continue reading →

Funny how the trailers had this coming out May 31, and Sony decided to sneak it out Memorial Day weekend instead. It’s doing decent business. Yeah, let’s go see this. No, I’m not proud.

It’s titled “The Year I Started Masturbating,” it stars “Sleepy Hollow” hottie Katia Winter and it’s SWEDISH. What’s not to love in this made-for-Netflix sex comedy? A lot. There’s a lot not to love. It’s a tepid tease of a … Continue reading →

Lithuanian filmmaker Sharunas Bartas achieves a “Defiance” level of grim, wintry detail in his post-war Soviet occupation drama “In the Dusk.” The director of “The Corridor,” “Freedom” and “Frost” tells a story of his native land’s countryside in 1948, with … Continue reading →

“Joy Ride” is loud, vulgar and crude, exactly what you’d expect from an Asian-American romp across “Girls’ Trip/Bridesmaids” terrain. But “Crazy Rich Asians” screenwriter turned director Adele Lim gives this raunchy road trip comedy a “Joy Luck Club” detour into … Continue reading →

Walt Disney Co. has taken a lot of abuse for converting its animated classics into still-largely-animated live action films. But The Mouse knows a dollar when it sees one sitting on the shelf as Disney-owned intellectual property. The new less-animated … Continue reading →

Memorial Day weekend always means WWII movie marathons on all your favorite classic movie channels. But I thought I’d get a jump on that by tracking down a favorite of mine from the ’80s and watching it for the first … Continue reading →

“Where the Tracks End” is an affectionate appreciation for the broke, small town schools that were the rule in much of Mexico much longer than they should have been, and the inspiring, intrepid women and men who made it their … Continue reading →