Author Archives: Roger Moore

There’s a melancholy magic about “Farewell Amor,” a story of Africans come to America, cultures clashing and a family tested by the shock of reunion after a long separation. Watching Ekwa Msangi’s debut feature, a remake of a short film … Continue reading →

This month’s version of “Assassins who primp” is Jessica Chastain, pale and perfectly put-together murderess for hire as “Ava.” She’s a woman of mystery whose job is “closing” targets for “management,” getting striking little splashes of blood on that immaculate … Continue reading →

Say what you will about the somewhat hokey supernatural love story that they’re trying to put over in “Wander Darkly.” But Sienna Miller and Diego Luna put on a clinic in screen chemistry in this melancholy puzzle-picture romance. Writer-director Tara … Continue reading →

If “satire,” as the playwright/wag George S. Kaufman famously observed, “is what closes Saturday night,” then what are the possibilities of “The Twentieth Century?” It’s a surreal, expressionistic satire, a camp vulgarization of history. And Hell’s bells, it’s CANADIAN history. … Continue reading →

It’s a little “Predator,” a bit of “Robocop” and a LOT “Terminator” — metal mercenaries of the not-too-distant future hit a Third World trouble spot. Mayhem ensues.

“Living well,” they say, “is the best revenge.” But what would you call living on — outlasting your enemies and loved ones, all your peers, outliving everything except for your memories? “Frau Stern” is about to turn 90. She has … Continue reading →

The signs are all there — a lurid underworld filled with over-the-top violent “villains,” thick London accents, bits of rhyming and pithy one-liners flung about by characters named Rawbone, Hard Eight, Tick Tock and “Not Now, Nigel.” That punchdrunk title? … Continue reading →

“The Stand-In” has the plot of what could have a Drew Barrymore of twenty years ago. She plays a comic actress, burned out and strung out, over the whole showbiz thing and ready to stop being a celebrity. And she … Continue reading →

A modern riff on Jane Austen? Alicia Witt, Shane McRae, Bebe Neuwirth, Li Jun Li, Daniella Pineda and Liza Lapira do a version of my favorite Austen novel, the less-filmed (Ciaran Hinds co-starred in the definitive version), playing up “Persuasion” … Continue reading →

Steve McQueen’s landmark “Small Axe” series, about the activist years of greater London’s West Indian diaspora, ends up an upbeat yet dramatically thinner and less satisfying than you’d hope note with “Education.” The finale, set in the early ’70s, when … Continue reading →