Monthly Archives: November 2023

“Tropic” is tale of brotherly bonds sorely tested by an “accident,” set against their schooling for a competition to see who is fittest to be among France’s long-mission space colonists. The latest by director and co-writer Edouard Salier (“Cabeza Madre”) … Continue reading →

Documentary filmmaker Tylor Norwood embedded himself with California firefighters battling the million acre “Dixie Fire” of 2021 for “Fireline,” a new documentary about the dangerous work and ever-worsening fire situation in California and around the world in a warming, drying … Continue reading →

“Frybread Face and Me” is a sweet, downbeat and somewhat melancholy coming-of-age tale about a Navajo “city Indian” sent to spend the summer of 1990 in the reservation where his mother grew up. Writer-director Billy Luther, who is of Navajo, … Continue reading →

Silly me, I kept thinking about David Fincher’s dry and somewhat overpraised hitman film “The Killer” during sequences of the French comic thriller “Nouveaux riches,” retitled “All-Time High” and dubbed — if you prefer — for English speaking consumption. The … Continue reading →

The first thing that leaps out at you from “Mercy Road” is the loud, insistent string-heavy “thriller” music, a score that’s reminiscent of “Psycho” in its aural urgency. It’s not an over-the-top miscalculation, as it was scored by its director … Continue reading →

“Teddy’s Christmas” is a holiday fantasy for children that’s long on charm and light — to the point of “slight” — in entertainment value. It’s a Norwegian film (“Teddybjørnens jul”) dubbed for the English-speaking market, and now featuring the voice … Continue reading →

Novelists and screenwriters talk of the same problem, facing ethnic expectations that the white entertainment infrastructure lays on them to “write Black” characters who are cultural stereotypes and who “sound Black” to white ears. “Look at what they publish. Loon … Continue reading →

Based on a hit novel, coming to Netflix Jan 11.

It takes a few minutes to settle in and figure out just what the hell is going on in “Dark Journey,” a twisty and handsomely-mounted romantic thriller of the espionage variety produced on the eve of World War II. The … Continue reading →

It’s looking like a HUGE Thanksgiving week-weekend at the box office, thanks to the fact that not one but THREE blockbusters targeting three different audiences are now in theaters. Funny how that works. You don’t have to run away from … Continue reading →