Monthly Archives: May 2023

It’s important to know when to “drop the mike.” Know when to say “when,” don’t spoil a peak moment by trying to top it, and don’t clutter up your finale so badly it spoils the effect of the stand-up set, … Continue reading →

A teenage girl gives in to her hormones and to tempation and faces the fundamentalist consquences in “The Starling Girl,” an evocative, gripping and revealing drama about a strict upbringing and how it can backfire on the person being groomed. … Continue reading →

Well, children aren’t watching these guys any more, are they? So why not throw Seth Rogen and his partner in the profane Evan Goldberg at this material. Because there’s just not enough “dark” and edgy fanboy content in the movies … Continue reading →

Sony’s effort to wholly blur the line between “comic book” and “comic book movie” comes to something like full fruition with “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” a mad cinematic jumble of comic book imagery, comic book mimicry, multiverse plotting and ponderous, … Continue reading →

This may start on time. Or not. Apparently, 24 locals somehow went to the wrong theater. “Tampa” in a nutshell.

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 →