Monthly Archives: August 2023

That weary thriller trope “It was just a dream” gets utterly beaten to death in the moody, obscure and somewhat convoluted horror tale “Deliver Us.” It’s a graphically violent a story set in Russia where a nun, claiming Catholic mythology’s … Continue reading →

The projections I was reading for Warners’ low-risk/limited star power superhero movie “Blue Beetle” pointed to a $30 million opening, not great for a comic book adaptation but not terrible for the movie dumping ground month of August. Middling Thursday … Continue reading →

“My dad spends every day looking at climate change,” Regina Thompson says of her father, the paleoclimatologist Lonnie Thompson, in the new documentary “Canary.” Her dad drills ice-core samples on the world’s glaciers, archiving a record of climate history going … Continue reading →

That oft-filmed and televised mythic Chinese folk hero “The Monkey King” earns a slick, slapshticky animated treatment for Netflix in his latest incarnation. He’s a classic flawed “hero,” a manic brawler and antic egomaniac, on a quest to join the … Continue reading →

“Bad Things” is an intimate thriller about the haunting power of trauma and four women whose messy interpersonal relationships and “history” aren’t done any favors by being in this spooky place. The place is an empty suburban hotel Ruthie (Gayle … Continue reading →

The new “Blue Beetle” embraces its heritage — the proud Latino one and not-too-proud to not have a laugh at its checkered DC comics and TV history . It’s representational, emphasizing its Spanishness with Spanglish and has laughs at North … Continue reading →

Warner Bros decided, after “The Flash,” to vastly reduce the number of cities they’d preview their products in. Vast swathes of the country were told “You don’t get to see “Barbie,” “The Meg 2” and now “Blue Beetle” in advance. … Continue reading →

For a filmmaker who came from the world of editing to create a string of visually striking films, several of them epics and more than a couple regarded as masterpieces, “Madeleine” stands out as a venture that wasn’t as “David … Continue reading →

“Eye of the Storm” is a Taiwanese disaster movie built around a pandemic and set inside a hospital. The coronavirus of this outbreak was SARS –Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome — which burst out of Asia in the spring of 2003. … Continue reading →

The true story of a pig farmer who killed hired hands and fed them to her hogs becomes an amateurishly awful thriller in the hands of first-time feature director Adam Fair, as “PigLady” fails in pretty much every way a … Continue reading →