Monthly Archives: September 2024

“Twelve Years a Slave” filmmaker Steve McQueen, a Brit, saw a photo of a Black child on London’s streets during the darkest days of World War II and was inspired to make this film. Saoirse Ronan is the big name … Continue reading →

Life and life and life and life prolonged,and cloned a sci-fi comedy about “multiples” and how they’re dealt with, even when they look like Robert Pattinson. Naomi Ackie also stars. Dino makes every “Edge of Tomorrow” death amusing in the … Continue reading →

Fitfully amusing and unfailingly sweet, “All Happy Families” is a rom-com that pleasantly passes the time to a sitcom beat. It’s also topical — sexual harassment and gender dysphoria come up — and it’s sensitive, which reflects the baggage of … Continue reading →

As the sun rises over Hollywood today, there are creeps who look like Harvey Weinstein, D.J. Qualls and Steve Buscemi passing judgment on the appearance, sexual allure and filmic “fertility” of young women from all over the world who come … Continue reading →

Maybe “Never Let Go” looked good on paper. Take your typical self-isolated “keep the kids safe from the world” thriller, people afraid of societal breakdown, the zombie apocalypse or an outbreak of “evil,” and jump to the part where we … Continue reading →

Sheer curiosity might be enough to lure the adventurous into “The Universal Theory,” a mysterious German-Swiss film noir that dabbles in alternate history and a confluence of events that might have triggered timeline shifts among those who were in its … Continue reading →

“Uglies” is another cut-and-paste dystopia-masquerading as-utopia-YA sci-fi thriller about youth imperiled and in revolt. It borrows from “Logan’s Run” and every book series/film series it inspired and a famous “Twilight Zone” episode — “Eye of the Beholder” — in creating … Continue reading →

F. Javier Gutiérrez’s “The Wait” is a supernatural parable of powerless poverty and callous wealth, the ancient class divide that endured in Spain under the Franco dictatorship. It’s a grim, well-acted vengeance thriller with moral underpinnings that would have worked, … Continue reading →

Ron Perlman’s a heavy in this “The only way for me to do something right is by doing something bad” redemption thriller.

I’ve taken on the task of painting houses in half a dozen states over the years, which is why I can say, with some authority, that viewing the amateurishly-paced, clumsily-titled “Fly Old Bird: Escape to the Ark” is “like watching … Continue reading →