Monthly Archives: June 2023

Romantic comedies that work typically walk a fine line between expectations if familiarity, and surprise that delights. We have to root for the couple, even though we anticipate them rubbing each other the wrong way — at first. You can … Continue reading →

“The Blackening” is a horror farce in the tradition of the “Scary Movie” and “A Haunted House” franchises, a send-up of Black horror and Black horror movie fans. It’s fast, foul-mouthed and freaking hilarious, a spoof within a spoof filled … Continue reading →

“Midday Black Midnight Blue” is an impressionistic collage in shades of grief. Non-linear in its storytelling, stingy with its facts, details and “truth,” it’s a picture that violates a lot of the basic covenants between filmmaker and audience. It’s more … Continue reading →

“American Graffiti” was a culture-shifting blockbuster when it came out, a modestly-budgeted movie with a mostly-no-name cast that spawned a 1950s-early-’60s nostalgia boom that swam against the tide that gave birth to disco and punk. Its warmth, innocence and fun, … Continue reading →

A couple of things come to mind after watching writer-director Harold Trompetero’s “To Love is to Grow,” a Netflix comedy titled “Amar es Madurar” (Love is to Mature) when it premiered in South America. The cleverest conceit in this rom-com … Continue reading →

This can’t have cost a lot, but there’s an anarchic energy to this trailer that suggests it could suck, or find its way to a few outlandish laughs. Two high schools forced to merge, a “last weekend,” sex, drugs, brawls … Continue reading →

“Montréal Girls” is a sharply-observed, sympathetically-scripted coming-of-age story about a Middle Eastern med student who has his horizons broadened and his heart broken by the title characters, the gorgeous bilingual young women of the capital of French Canada. What director … Continue reading →

Every generation in the history of the Western World figures it’s the one that has mastered bringing up babies, that the difficulties it tackles are “new” and not as old as time itself. And there’s always a raft of movies … Continue reading →

Pixar is as entitled to a swing and a miss as any studio. But the lovely-looking miscalculation that is “Elemental” stands out on the CGI animation house’s resume as a rare swing-and-almost-completely-miss. It’s sentimental slop with a shiny, polished sheen. … Continue reading →

You’ve spent years writing and making short films, working your way towards that “feature writing and directing debut.” And then some smug critic comes along and dismisses it with a “The longer ‘Bone Cold’ goes on, the worse it gets.” … Continue reading →