Monthly Archives: September 2023

Energy, violence and a breathless pace cover some of the many sins of “Freestyle,” a Polish hip hop thriller about selling drugs to finance a record because our Polish hero “needs to be spittin’” rhymes. Amped-up, coked-out drug dealers at … Continue reading →

Yorgos Lanthimos strikes again? “A woman plotting her course to freedom!”

Jane Fonda wasn’t the star attraction, or even the prettiest actress on the screen in her third film, 1962’s “Walk on the Wild Side.” The regal French beauty Capucine was higher billed. The versatile Anne Baxter and earth mama Joanna … Continue reading →

It sometimes seemed, in the long years of trials, deflections and evasions that comprised the last days of Chile’s murderous looter and dictator Augusto Pinochet, that the monstrous bastard would never die. A “normalized” and “accepted” despot with a tidier … Continue reading →

It’s hard to work up much enthusiasm — or any at all — for “Little Jar,” a limited-cast/couple of settings COVID comedy that comes too late to cash in on “Look at the movie they got made despite restrictions” and … Continue reading →

Reshoots, delays, less Amber Heard, maybe no Aquaman at all in James Gunn’s vision for DC comics movies down the road. In any event, here’s the sequel now slated for a few days just before Christmas.

This Rodrigo Moreno thriller opens in late October in New York and LA and stars Daniel Eliás and Esteban Bigliardi as an Argentinian bank employee who does the crime and confesses to do the time, and the pal he stashes … Continue reading →

When streaming was still new, I had a notion that it might be the perfect place for movies and filmmakers who’d rarely fill-four-corners of a theater with their work, the creators of romances, dramas and thrillers on a smaller scale. … Continue reading →

It takes a good 70 minutes for Danish filmmaker Bille August’s period piece “Ehrengard: The Art of Seduction,” to get through its talk-talk-talk opening acts, on its feet and find its fun and its purpose. It’s a 94 minute film, … Continue reading →

Payne and his “Sideways” star/muse take us to a boarding school over the winter holiday of 1970, a student whose parents don’t seem to have time for him, a teacher (Giamatti) no one likes and a cook (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) … Continue reading →