Monthly Archives: February 2023

Is Screen Gems frantically trying to grab the remake rights to the Korean stolen cell-phone thriller “Unlocked?” If they aren’t, the Hollywood distributor of “Searching” and its somewhat lesser follow-up “Missing” is missing the boat. “Unlocked” is a crackling, nervy … Continue reading →

Guy Ritchie’s (“Snatch”) and Danny Boyle (“Trainspotting”) made it all look so easy that Matthew Vaughn (“Layer Cake”) thought he’d have a go. But that slice of British working class/underclass/criminal class life ensemble dramedy thing is easy to imitate, harder … Continue reading →

Finally, a video game movie we can all get behind. March 31, this bizarre tale of how “the perfect game” escaped from the Soviet Union and made Gameboy the toy of the decade, comes to Apple TV+.

March 24, the gangs all back — Keanu, Lance, Laurence and Ian, with a Skarsgård, a “Warriors” reference and a Donnie Yen. What the trailer doesn’t tell you? This beast is two hours and 49 minutes long.

A Syrian refugee child finds comfort in the poetry, philosophy and biography of Jalaluddin Rumi in “Lamya’s Poem,” an engaging animated drama that compares its title character’s life and fate with that of her fellow refugee, a 13th century Persian … Continue reading →

Freeman plays the expert consulted by the cop (Hauser) tracking this bizarre, multi-continental murderer. March 10.

I don’t think the Japanese title of “Re/Member” is as clever a pun as it is in English. As this is a horror tale of high school kids trapped by a ghost, doomed to search for and re-assemble the dismembered … Continue reading →

Broadly speaking, China’s World War II began before anybody else’s, and ended with the conclusion of the long off-and-on Chinese Civil War that preceded it and postdated it. Any trip down the rabbit hole of the various Sino-Japanese wars, considered … Continue reading →

A melancholy Chinese romance of love-unconfessed and much else left unsaid, writer-director Luyi Zhang’s “Yanagawa” takes its title from its Japanese setting. But that title, like the film’s “love triangle that might be a quadrangle,” is somewhat ironic. The canal-laced … Continue reading →

“Marlowe” is a vamp, a bunch of 60somethings playacting hardboiled 40somethings. I’m OK with that, for obvious reasons. The light isn’t right. This is the first filmed-version of Raymond Chandler’s famed LA gumshoe shot in Barcelona and Dublin, which explains … Continue reading →