Monthly Archives: January 2025

Movie Review: Zombie Apocalypse is the least of This Cali Hamlet’s problems — “Hemet, or the Landlady Don’t Drink Tea”

The line between a “Z-movie,” a “zero stars” on the one-to-four-star scale, and a very bad one-star C or B movie usually comes down to intent. Did they set out to make a film this awful? Was their motivation or … Continue reading

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Netflixable? Ex-cop Scrambles Up and Down and all around Paris “Ad Vitam”

The Latin title “Ad Vitam” doesn’t translate to “over the top,” which might be the biggest letdown in this brisk — once it gets going — French action picture. A star vehicle conceived by Gullaume Canet, (“All Time High”), a … Continue reading

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Movie Preview: DeNiro sits down with DeNiro, two mobsters, “The Alto Knights”

Bobby D. as Vito Genovese? And Frank Costello? In the same film? Bada BING. Debra Messing, Michael Rispoli and Cosmo Jarvis are in this Barry Levinson film, scripted by the veteran NYC crime reporter turned screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi, who scripted … Continue reading

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Movie Preview: What terror awaits from “The Woman in the Yard?”

The milieu is what’s most novel about this March 28 Blumhouse horror release. Rural, Southern, African American terror remembered in a child’s cryptic rhyme. The trailer is cut in ways sure to raise a hair or two on the back … Continue reading

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Movie Review: Teen Temptress, Femme Fatale, or Victim? “Nahir”

“Nahir,” a brooding, glamourized and sexed-up account of a notorious Argentine murder case, is a mystery thriller that aims for engrossing and immersive that never falls short of quite watchable along the way. Screenwriter Sofia Wilhelmi and director Hernán Gu … Continue reading

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Classic Film Review: Accept no Substititute for this Suspsense Masterpiece — “The Wages of Fear” (1953)

Stanley Kubrick was among the most famous filmmakers to assert that if you can’t tell what’s happening in a film — the emotions and motivations of the characters and the point of it all — with the sound turned off, … Continue reading

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Movie Review: Wild West Dinklage chases Juliette Lewis into “The Thicket”

“The Thicket” is a Western built on archetyepal characters pursuing one another through a forbidding and unforgiving archetypal Western landscape. It’s a wintry fin de siècle “manhunt” for a young woman, and another woman gang-leader named Cut Throat Bill who … Continue reading

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Movie Preview: A “Cupid Killer” thriller for Valentine’s Day — “Heart Eyes”

Producers associated with the “Scream” franchise are behind this surviving Valentine’s Day/surviving a serial killer thriller. Jordana Brewster stars. Olivia Holt is another “name” in it. Devon Sawa and Mason Gooding also star. Those “producers,” the screenwriters and actor turned … Continue reading

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A Snow Day is always a movie day, but not to a Cocker Spaniel

A Cocker never forgets her first snowfall. “Tell me more about this ‘Iditarod’ of your Alaska days, Dad. Where do I sign up?”

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Netflixable? WWII Underground Agent “Number 24 (Nr. 24)” tells kids what’s called for when you Fight Fascism

One of the smartest places Netflix has put its international production money is Scandivanian World War II films. A collection of true or “inspired by” true stories have shown us forgotten heroics, sacrifice, treachery and air raids that went wrong. … Continue reading

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