Monthly Archives: July 2024

You scroll through your Amazon Prime queue and notice that there’s an Emma Roberts comedy called “Space Cadet,” a film that she just made it and that it’s not some project you missed from her teens and 20s (she’s 33). … Continue reading →

“The Beautiful Summer (La bella estate)” is a sumptuous Italian period piece, a “discovering my sexuality” romance that’s gorgeous to look at, frame by frame. But when the frame moves, the story those images slowly tell is shallow and slight, … Continue reading →

“My Man Godfrey” struck a nerve when it opened in the middle of The Great Depression. It’s a nerve that it strikes to this very day. A movie that presents the idle rich as “empty-headed nitwits,” with even the more … Continue reading →

It often seems to me that when it comes to “on the spectrum” characters, the movies have never managed to progress beyond the Hugh Dancy/Rose Byrne Asperger’s romance “Adam,” which came out some 15 years ago. Screenwriters take liberties, making … Continue reading →

That “magnificent” hulking, “talking, pratfall-taking sight gag that is Dave Bautista” didn’t get the lesson that maybe a violent action film pairing him with a little girl wasn’t the best idea after “My Spy.” It wasn’t a box office hit, for … Continue reading →

Even a casual Marx Brothers fan knows that the siblings made their best films for their first Hollywood studio, Paramount Pictures. Already vaudeville veterans pushing past 40, they made their satiric masterpiece, “Duck Soup”(1933) and the wacky stage adaptations “The … Continue reading →

The best Hallmark movie in years was snatched up by Netflix. “Find Me Falling” is a Harry Connick Jr. star vehicle and showcases him as an aged rock star fleeing the downward spiral that comes for most rock stars after … Continue reading →

The prologue that opens “Twisters” introduces a bunch of characters and kills them off, somewhat dramatically but coldbloodedly. It takes the film a whole hour to raise the stakes as high a second time, hurling characters into a rodeo and … Continue reading →

The cop “buddy picture”has been around so long that they many films made from this model run together in the mind. It’s all one long “Bad Boys” and “Lethal Weapon” high speed “Rush” down “21 Jump Street” where “The Other … Continue reading →

There are plenty of elements that almost instantly categorize the German comedy “Blame the Game” as a farce. It’s got a large ensemble, mostly people who know each other, gathering for a group board and card game night. Some take … Continue reading →