Monthly Archives: January 2025

Movie Preview: A twist on the remote house full of people who can’t make it “Until Dawn”

Peter Stormare is in this “Fresh Faces of 2025” sinister swing into the supernatural.

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Movie Preview: Ayo Edebiri, Juliette Lewis and Malkovich and his magnum cult “Opus”

Aged and reclusive pop icon comes out of seclusion for an”event” for the “select few.” Have Kanye or Madonna thought of this? The debut feature of Mark Anthony Green is built around a comedy central star, and John Malkovich. March … Continue reading

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Movie Review: A 1970 “radical” family working through their issues — “Three Birthdays”

“Radical” politics — sexual, racial and otherwise — Vietnam, the first Earth Day, the sexual revolution, “female solidarity” and Kent State are the backdrop of “Three Birthdays,” a downbeat family melodrama about the day “The Sixties Died.” Writer-director Jane Weinstock … Continue reading

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Documentary Review: An Italian who inspired Tarantino, “Piero Vivarelli: Life as a B-Movie”

Piero Vivarelli was an Italian B-movie filmmaker, a “genre” director who dabbled in several genres, most famous (at home) for his musicarello pop and rock movies of the 60s. If you’ve never heard of Rita Pavone, Tony Renis, Mina and … Continue reading

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Movie Preview: Blaxploitation has its Biggest Afro Yet — Shaina West is “Jade”

Two fisted, two-footed, machete-and-pistol-packing Brit Mama “Jade” never backs down from a fight. Especially when she’s caught between rivals — a gangster and a businessman, one of them played by Mickey Rourke. Shaina West is a stunt woman turned action … Continue reading

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Netflixable? Jamie and Cameron skylark through “Back in Action”

An absurd script is navigated with brio and professionalism in the “Back in Action” comedy. Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz summon up their old school cool and comical chemistry (“Annie”), Glenn Close trots out an accent and the quips and … Continue reading

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Classic Film Review: James Joyce by John Huston, “The Dead”(1987)

You don’t have to get old to truly appreciate John Huston’s elegiac ode to Belle Epoque Ireland and his farewell to the cinema. Wintry, wistful, funereal and poetic, James Joyce’s “The Dead” becomes a simple, short and beautiful postcard from … Continue reading

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Movie Preview: Amy Schumer and Jillian Bell, which one is “Kinda Pregnant?”

Good to see Schumer back. Has she, uh, mellowed? Does parenthood cure “Trainwreck?” Feb. 5

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Movie Review: Colman Domingo plays an inmate with theatre in his blood at “Sing Sing”

Colman Domingo and the humanizing act of making theatre co-star in “Sing Sing,” a sometimes moving and often entertaining dramedy about prison inmates who just want to “put on a show.” Domingo and a couple of other professional actors, and … Continue reading

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Movie Review: Tragic, Scandalous and Recent History Remembered — “Nickel Boys”

In “Nickel Boys,” first-time feature director RaMell Ross almost overwhelms performance with technique. Characters are obscured, faces hidden, glimpsed from the legs down to their shoes, passing by in the blur of memory. By the time we set our eyes … Continue reading

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