Author Archives: Roger Moore

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About Roger Moore

Movie Critic, formerly with McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Orlando Sentinel, published in Spin Magazine, The World and now published here, Orlando Magazine, Autoweek Magazine

Movie Review: Make “Animal Farm” Great Again?

Posted on April 23, 2026 by Roger Moore

George Orwell’s parable of totalitarianism earns a Trump era updating in a new animated “Animal Farm,” this one backed by Angel Studios and not the CIA. Actor turned “Venom” sequel director and the one-and-only “Gollum” in J.R.R. Tolkienland Andy Serkis … Continue reading →

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Netflixable? June Squibb is “Eleanor the Great”

Posted on April 22, 2026 by Roger Moore

Timing, especially in comedy, is everything. But Sony Pictures Classics had no way of knowing that its Oscar-campaigned Jewish Holocaust dramedy “Eleanor the Great” would come out in the middle of worldwide outrage at an ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza. … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: “Deported” should have been Stopped at the Border

Posted on April 22, 2026 by Roger Moore

There’s something almost criminal about Amazon acquiring the 2020 immigration “comedy” “Deported,” and passing it off as a “new” “2026” release on their streaming service. There hasn’t been a good time to unleash a raunchy, tone deaf and whitewashed farce … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Tipsy Italians talk a lad into “The Last One for the Road”

Posted on April 21, 2026 by Roger Moore

“The Last One for the Road” is a seemingly aimless drunken drive through northern Italy, a picaresque misadventure in a minor key about a Neopolitan kid, fresh out of college, being taught “the meaning of life.” Francesco Sossai’s curious gambole … Continue reading →

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Netflixable? Coogan and Bird Charm their Way through a Class on Fascism — “The Penguin Lessons”

Posted on April 20, 2026 by Roger Moore

No English speaking actor in film is better at making caddish and insufferably self-absorbed charming than Steve Coogan. That proves to be a saving grace of “The Penguin Lessons,” a sweet saunter through a true story of a rescued bird … Continue reading →

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Netflixable? Bacon and Sedgwick remind us to do “The Best You Can”

Posted on April 19, 2026 by Roger Moore

Any team-up of one of the cinema’s most enduring off-camera couples, Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon, should be cherished. They’re both so very good and “natural” doesn’t begin to describe their onscreen chemistry together. They’re as close as Hollywood gets … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: “I Was a Stranger” and You Welcomed Me

Posted on January 4, 2026 by Roger Moore

Just when you think that you’ve seen and heard all sides of the human migration debate, and long after you fear that the cruel, the ignorant and the scapegoaters have won that shouting match, a film comes along and defies … Continue reading →

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Netflixable? Comfort Food Film is Always in Season, “Goodbye June”

Posted on January 3, 2026 by Roger Moore

Oscaar winner Kate Winslet directed and stars in “Goodbye June,” a sentimental and sharply-observed dramedy in which terrific performances and a couple of deeply emotional scenes overcome the glum predictability of it all. Because everybody knows the holidays are a … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: “Psycho Therapy: The Shallow Tale of a Writer Who Decided to Write about a Serial Killer”

Posted on January 2, 2026 by Roger Moore

Sometimes a film title says it all, or at least entirely too much. Turkish filmmaker Tolga Karaçelik blunders into that truism all too eagerly with his American feature film debut — a comic thriller he deigned to over-label “Psycho Therapy: … Continue reading →

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Classic Film Review: Hitchcock “adapts” to Talkies — “East of Shanghai” (aka “Rich and Strange”) (1931)

Posted on January 1, 2026 by Roger Moore

It came as a surprise for me, and probably shouldn’t have, that Alfred Hitchcock’s transition to sound from silent cinema took more than a film or two and more than a year or two. Hitchcock was half a dozen films … Continue reading →

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