Monthly Archives: May 2024

Long before its gambling revival and later slow return to decay, long before Louis Malle’s 1980 drama “Atlantic City,” the historic but forlorn resort city had been emblematic of American ennui, a place of elegaic, baroque nostalgia and decline. The … Continue reading →

Slick, sex-uped and maddeningly-shallow, “The Courier” is another variation on the “get rich quick via money-laundering” formula based on real events that roiled Europe and Spain in the early 2000s. We learn precious little about the backers, reasons (real estate … Continue reading →

One of the hallmarks of a classic film is the way it impacted the cinema of its day and all the movies on its subject that followed. “Citizen Kane” changed the movies. “Stagecoach” became the benchmark of Westerns. And marriage, … Continue reading →

This comic thriller about a gullible little old lady who gets mixed up in things way beyond her experience of the world co-stars Richard Roundtree, Parker Posey, Clark Gregg and Fred Hechinger and opens June 21.

It is one of the hoariest conventions in screen thrillers. Round up a bunch of people, some of them armed and dangerous. Park them in a roadside diner, and see what happens. The classic “The Petrified Forest,” based on a … Continue reading →

“Innocuous, predictable and well-cast” is about all the praise “Mother of the Bride” warrants, unless you consider another movie featuring the lovely scenery of Phuket, Thailand a deal-maker. Looking for laughs in this Brooke Shields comedy is like panning for … Continue reading →

The phrase “spectacularly pointless” hangs over the tenth “Planet of the Apes” movie, a stand-alone sequel to “War for the Planet of the Apes,” which came out seven years ago. Granted, I was thinking “umpteenth” in terms of the actual … Continue reading →

Sienna Miller, Danny Huston, Giovani Ribisi, Sam Worthington, Luke Wilson, Michael Rooker, JEna Malone, Abbey Lee, Isabelle Furhman, Owen Crow She, Will Patton and Tatanka Means join Costner in his take on “How the West was Won.” Looks a tad … Continue reading →

This one’s all country music and “try that in a small town” vs. “city girl” and “yer fancy tech” “You don’t face your fears, you ride’em” swagger. Yeah, they rednecked up and dumbed “Twister” down for “Twisters.” Oklahoma “never had … Continue reading →

Oh yeah. That’s the ticket.