Monthly Archives: August 2023

Layers of hurt and pieces of a puzzle peel away over the course of Kôji Fukada’s “Love Life,” a forlorn and downbeat drama with dissonant dramedy touches. It’s intriguing yet so slow and quiet as to test one’s patience, duller … Continue reading →

Gibson joins Collin Woodell, Nhung Kate, Katie McGrath, Jessica Alain and…Ray McKinnon in this continuation “prequel” of Wickworld and the hotel for assassins. For those not following the post-“cancellation” Mel Gibson saga, this sort of violent action setting has been … Continue reading →

A tone poem on rural life, community and Black life in the rural South. A fall feature from our friends at A24.

“The Pod Generation” is an aridly-dry sci-fi satire about childbirth in a more technologically convenient future. It’s a dark comedy that’s more cautionary than amusing, and downright triggering at times. Writer-director Sophia Barthes extrapolates our app-obsessed/mega-corp-controlled present world into that … Continue reading →

Decades of “Twilight Zone” episodes and movies from “Primer”” and “Timecrimes” to “Safety Not Guaranteed” have demonstrated that you don’t need a huge budget to tell a time travel story. The best films of the genre are intellectual exercises, and … Continue reading →

This looks fascinating, a “hack” that hit the weakest link in a banking/Federal Reserve chain. “Billion Dollar Heist” comes out Aug. 15.

Writer-director Roderick MacKay’s “The Furnace” is a solid if somewhat slow Australian variation on the “gold fever leads to gold madness” “Treasure of Sierra Madre” theme. MacKay’s debut feature is about a blood-stained quest to get stolen gold out of … Continue reading →

I was traveling Monday when word came down that the great action director William Friedkin died. I only interviewed him once, about one of his lesser titles, “Blue Chips,” which brought him to Orlando where he and Shaquille O’Neal held … Continue reading →

This looks like a great production values period piece that ably mimics old school Universal horror fun.

“Jules” is a bland comedy about aging and an alien, of little consequence save for its impressive and whimsically-engaged cast. Oscar winner Ben Kingsley, Emmy winner Jane Curtin and always-amusing Emmy nominee Harriet Sansom Harris take their shot at this … Continue reading →