Monthly Archives: April 2024

Josh Hartnett, Alison Pill, Hayley Mills and some relative of M. Night’s star in this Aug. 9 release. A big pop concert is used to capture a notorious serial killer, who apparently is a fan of the “Gaga-esque” singer, played … Continue reading →

“The Roaring Twenties” is a summation of the classic “gangster movie” era, all rolled up into one swift, sprawling narrative. Produced by THE gangster movie studio, Warner Brothers, released in that pinnacle cinematic year of 1939, we can look back … Continue reading →

The two most beaten-to-death tropes in thrillers? “Serial Killers” and “Hit Men.” Here’s a Richard Linklater “true story” movie about a college prof (Powell of “Anyone But You,” “Top Gun: Maverick”) whom the police use as a play-acting fake “hit-man” … Continue reading →

The blood flows, “Swan Lake” plays on 78 rpm records and “tiny dancer” jokes abound in the revolting and funny “Abigail,” a “dead before dawn” thriller about a kid ballerina kidnap victim who turns out to be a vampire. One … Continue reading →

A driven and heartless tabloid photographer finally grasps why some cultures believe a photograph steals part of your soul in “Disappear Completely,” a cerebral and seriously stylish thriller from Mexico. It’s a tale of supernatural comeuppance for a do-anything-for-the-shot mercenary … Continue reading →

“The Big Bend” is a classic “film festival movie.” That’s a quirky indie with several elements that land it in lots of film festivals, where audiences who are down for anything new and novel might find and embrace it. Such … Continue reading →

Guy Ritchie’s “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” is a jaunty burlesque of the conventions of the combat commando film. Peopled with genuine characters, in every meaning of that phrase, and a piece of the real history that inspired Ian Fleming … Continue reading →

Here we are and here we go. Review to post by 11 Eastern if I’m lucky. (The review is now live, posted here).

“Deadly Justice” is a C or D movie thriller so badly scripted, amateurishly-acted and stridently-scored that you wonder where the money to make it, or make it all better, went? It was shot and set in Biloxi. Didn’t the state … Continue reading →

Penn’s not box office any more, if he ever was. Wildly unpopular with a certain political fringe, not all that popular with any other political fringes. Dakota Johnson is a much-abused and rightly-so nepo baby star without a whole lot … Continue reading →