Monthly Archives: November 2025

Netflixable? A Life Lived with Loss and a Search for meaning — “Train Dreams”

“Train Dreams” is a forlorn folk ballad with pretensions of being a tone poem. This downboat but picturesque saga of one man’s life during the lumbering-mad early years of the 20th century is both intimate and remote. We see a … Continue reading

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Movie Review: An Actor finds the Meaning of His Calling working as “Rental Family”

Just when you think Japanese culture could not seem more strange and exotic, along comes another movie reminder that the “problems” have a different gravitas over there, and the solutions to them can be downright ingenius. Little shrines decorate the … Continue reading

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Movie Review — “Wicked: For Good” does Dorothy Wrong

I said at the start that turning “Wicked” the musical into a two-part big screen epic was a mistake. Just how big a mistake is obvious as this bloated beast staggers to the end of the Yellow Brick Road in … Continue reading

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Movie Review: “Sisu: Road to Revenge” takes a Wrong Turn or Three

I am an audience of one at a late afternoon “preview” matinee of “Sisu 2,” aka “Sisu: Road to Revenge,” the sequel to the savage sleeper hit by Finnish carnage Jalmari Helander. Do the locals know something I don’t? Or … Continue reading

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Movie Marathon Thursday, “Wicked for Good,” “Rental Family” and “Sisu 2: Finno-Russian Boogaloo”

Erivo, Arianna and Goldblum again, Brendan F speaking Japanese and Stephen Lang as a Russian trying to kill an unkillable Finn. Again. A few more songs, some curious corners of Japanese culture and dead Russians by the dozen. A pretty … Continue reading

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Movie Review: A New Yorker widowed by a Police Shooting seeks Justice in “Aftershock: The Nicole P. Bell Story”

An infamous police shooting leads to trials and a search for justice that doesn’t end in a courtroom in “Aftershock” The Nicole P. Bell Story.” It’s a sturdy, often moving fil built aroud Rayven Symone Ferrell’s affecting performance in the … Continue reading

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Movie Review: Of Course Kevin James stars in the “Playdate” from Hell

The most violent children’s entertainment since “The Silence of the Lambs” stars Kevin James, features Isla Fisher as leader of a hard-drinking “gang” of soccer moms and gives the inventive character player Alan Tudyck his best shot at impersonating and … Continue reading

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Documentary Review: Australia’s Oscar hopes rely on Mongolians who know “The Wolves Always Come at Night”

“The Wolves Always Come at Night” is an evocative immersion in a dying way of life, that of nomadic Mongolian goat, horse and cattle herders. Gabrielle Brady’s documentary captures the stark beauty of the treeless brownscape of the Mongolian steppes, … Continue reading

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Movie Preview: Her Fiancee is Murdered by Cops at his Bachelor party — “Aftershock — The Nicole P. Bell Story”

Rayven Ferrell, Bentley Green, Richard Lawson, Kevin Jackson, and Richard T. Jones star in this damning true story about trigger happy, out-of-control policing. “Aftershock” hits cinemas Nov. 28 and streaming Dec. 15.

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Movie Review: A Mother’s Past and Present Blur “When Fall is Coming”

François Ozon has to be the French cinema’s premier poker player. With his genre-bending/expectations-upending dramas (“Everything Went Fine”), dramedies (“In the House”), feminist comedies (“Potiche”) and musical drama mysteries (“8 Women”), you’d hate to be seated at the same table … Continue reading

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