Monthly Archives: September 2023

“Rotting in the Sun” is the most sexually explicit gay missing person hunt in the history of cinema. It’s a dark, deadpan comedy that isn’t really funny, but whose premise is the the quintessence of “permission to laugh.” A suicidal … Continue reading →

A rich and powerful patriarch faces the end with a household full of women scheming against him in “The Origin of Evil,” a clever and twisty French thriller that’s a little bit “King Lear” and a little bit more “Sucession.” … Continue reading →

“Outlaw Johnny Black” takes its title from “The Outlaw Josey Wales,” its first gag from “A Fistful of Dollars,” its hero’s wardrobe from “Django Unchained,” its plot from “Buck and the Preacher” (sort of) and its cast from a pool … Continue reading →

I was attending my first New York Film Festival in 1990 when the Chinese Cinema Revolution reached America’s shores. The film was Zhang Yimou and Yang Fengliang’s overwrought, elegaic and allegorial “Ju Dou,” and it gave much of the world … Continue reading →

Like astronauts Neil Armstrong and Guion Bluford, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and movie directors Steven Spielberg and David Lynch, I am an Eagle Scout. In Lynch’s case, he used to approve only one biographical sentence in press notes … Continue reading →

As we enter the fifth decade of gay coming-of-age screen romances, the biggest challenge for filmmakers seems to be finding something new to say on the subject. To be fair, the straight version of such tales of “first love” has … Continue reading →

Taking “Godzilla” out of its post-war Japan setting, a country and culture struggling to take on the mantle of victimhood but silently knowing they deserved to be punished, kind of ruined most of the recent iterations of the monster for … Continue reading →

“Io sto bene” is a quiet Italian take on the inter-European immigrant experience, a reverie recalled on two timelines as an old man’s encounter with a young woman reminds him of his accidental move to tiny Luxembourg over 50 years … Continue reading →

Take any genre, any movie in any film series and add Tina Fey to it and the proceedings are always going to be more fun. Fey joins Kenneth Branagh‘s merry parade of Hercule Poirot period pieces for “A Haunting in … Continue reading →

A woman tries to reconnect with her estranged…and very rich French family in this Sébastien Marnier (“School’s Out”) thriller. Looks privileged and acrid. Sept. 22, this rolls out in select cities.