Author Archives: Roger Moore

If “accuracy” should never supersede the demands of “story” in a screen biography, then Josh Trank’s “comeback,” an account of the last months of mobster Al Capone’s life, can be dismissed as a total write-off. Starring Tom Hardy in a … Continue reading →

How bad is the Colombian farce “No Andaba Muerto, Estaba de Parrando,” clumsily translated to “Death Can Wait” on your English language Netflix menu? After flailing away for what seems like forever, setting up “You have six weeks to live” … Continue reading →

Filmmaker takes 40 years to years to film and finish his documentary on the great writer. Reminds me of the stories about Henry Jaglom and Peter Bogdanovich, always recording and filming as they cozied up to Orson Welles. Will this … Continue reading →

He doesn’t compose songs or write lyrics. Yet. But is there nothing this man cannot do? https://www.instagram.com/tv/B_8IgCmHFuC/?utm_source=ig_embed

A few months before “The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio” came out on film, the publisher and releasing studio (Dreamworks) sent me the book, Terry Ryan’s memoir of growing up in a dysfunctional yet functioning family in the 1950s and … Continue reading →

Don’t you just hate it when a tearjerker works? The manipulation’s built-in, understood, right there in the open for you to put up your guard against. And then…dammit. Netflix put “18 Presents (18 Regali)” on its menu just in time … Continue reading →

“Castle in the Ground” is the simplest of rescue parables. A young man devotes himself to saving his dying mother. And when that fails, this teen in shining armor starts using mom’s leftover painkillers. That’s what changes his focus to … Continue reading →

Remember AOL, AOL chat rooms and the naughtiness that could be unleashed there in the early days of the Internet? That’s what this comedy’s about. A Catholic girl getting online and in over her head.  

“Laughter in Paradise” is a British version of that “to inherit my money, here are the wacky conditions you must meet” story, the one born in the play “Seven Chances,” which Buster Keaton turned into one of the great silent … Continue reading →

Taut, tense and nerve-wracking, “Into the Night” is a European riff on the “End of Days” disaster movie formula that plays by the rules and rarely disappoints. Running on wit, grit, bigotry and the national stereotypes that have riven the … Continue reading →