Author Archives: Roger Moore

Any list of the best vengeance thrillers of recent vintage has to include Park Chan-Wook’s “Oldboy” andHans Petter Moland’s “In Order of Disappearance.” Add your favorite here, because there are lots of examples through film history, movies about a great … Continue reading →

The company is Hungarian, pressed into service with their German allies occupying a corner of the partially-conquered Soviet Union during World War II. But as they troop through the dreary woods, drifting from one fraught encounter with the locals to … Continue reading →

Mesmerizing from its crypto-poetic opening to its drop the mike finale, “Candela” is a thriller as exotic and mysterious as its locale, a brisk and atmospheric tale bathed in drugs, sex and corruption. First-time feature director Andrés Farías and his … Continue reading →

The best survival narratives, from “Robinson Crusoe” through “The Martian” all focus on “work the problem” details. How do you survive a shipwreck or sailboat sinking (“All is Lost,” “Dead Calm”), being trapped in a forest fire, being marooned on … Continue reading →

The most chilling consideration in “The Royal Hotel,” a tense tale of two Canadian 20somethings stuck in a mining town bar in the middle of Toxic Masculinity, Australia, is how nothing that happens there seems the least bit far fetched. … Continue reading →

“Story Ave.” is a Bronx tale about graffiti, growing up and coming to grips with grief. The debut feature of commercial director Aristotle Torres, it’s immersed in street life, a vivid portrait of gangs — “crews” — that spread their … Continue reading →

Perhaps the last thing you’d expect a reboot of “The Exorcist” franchise to botch is — you know — the exorcism scene. But that’s what “The Exorcist: Believer” does. It’s another David Gordon Green (“Halloween” franchise) reboot, so you can … Continue reading →

I’ve seen “Stop Making Sense” a few times over the years, and that was reason enough to duck back into this re-issued classic 1984 concert film between other new releases to catch it on the big screen the other night. … Continue reading →

“On Fire” is a solid if generally unsurprising drama spun out of every week’s headlines, a tale of a family scrambling to escape the wildfire that’s exploded all around their rural home in the dry, mountainous American West. Starring and … Continue reading →

The cinematic label for any film under 40 minutes is “a short.” But in the case of “Strange Way of Life,” Pedro Almodóvar’s half hour long gay Western romance with gunplay, the better descriptor might be “small.” Truncated, even. A … Continue reading →