Monthly Archives: June 2023

The golden age of big screen satire began, more or less, with 1964’s “Doctor Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” peaked with “Network” (1976) and wrapped up with “Being There” and “Life of Brian” … Continue reading →

Alan Arkin, who passed away today at the grand old age of 89, was one of the great comic actors of his generation and a couple of generations that followed. He was one of my all-time favorites, and if he … Continue reading →

With its same sex-coupled hero, its shapeshifting “monster” heroine at war with the “small minded,” its score adorned with “The Banana Splits Song,” a street sax player covering “Careless Whisper,” and characters testing a futuristic car sound system with a … Continue reading →

One of the gifts or curses of reviewing films for decades is that ability to spot a fiasco in the first few frames. Some movies start off with promise and lose it. Some stumble but give you the hope that … Continue reading →

There’s always a hint of defiance in mentioning the movie you’re most determined to steal from. It’s a dare, like “Sure, COMPARE our movie to that one.” Usually, it’s a bit misguided. “You can’t outrun the curse! Haven’t you ever … Continue reading →

Getting romance in a science fiction blockbuster is a rare and precious thing. Raising the stakes, amping up the action, Chalamet maturing into the role. This looks and FEELS ike a major step up from the somewhat tedious “universe building” … Continue reading →

Tense, tight and comically dark, movies like “Very Big Shot” are why you take cinematic journeys Around the World with Netflix. If not for the streaming service resurrecting this Lebannese gem from 2016, it might have passed unnoticed, save for … Continue reading →

So, it’s a Liam Neeson “Speed?” August 25, Liam and Matthew Modine and lesser know co-stars take his “particular skills” to the streets. Classic late August B-movie with a big star and a few possibilities about it.

Richard Armitage gives off Big Liam Neeson energy in “The Man from Rome,” a papal thriller about land grabs, murder and historical church coverups set in that picture postcard in the south of Spain, Seville. But while casting the veteran … Continue reading →

Submitted for your approval, two men sequestered in a “Biosphere” of their own creation, isolated from civilization, Beckett characters in a Pirandello parable of human evolution in a time of ecological crisis and existential disconnect due to ever-changing pronouns. It’s … Continue reading →