Category Archives: Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news

Maverick movie maker, indie icon, “Pope of Pop Cinema, sponsor of the careers of the great and near great, Roger Corman made a singular mark on the movies over a career that spanned half a century. Directors Demme and Coppola … Continue reading →

Long before its gambling revival and later slow return to decay, long before Louis Malle’s 1980 drama “Atlantic City,” the historic but forlorn resort city had been emblematic of American ennui, a place of elegaic, baroque nostalgia and decline. The … Continue reading →

Slick, sex-uped and maddeningly-shallow, “The Courier” is another variation on the “get rich quick via money-laundering” formula based on real events that roiled Europe and Spain in the early 2000s. We learn precious little about the backers, reasons (real estate … Continue reading →

The lesson for Universal Studios could not be more stark. Twentieth Century (Disney) makes bank, yet again, with the middling, pointless and CGI-dominated tenth movie in the ever-rebooted/even-became-a-TV-series “Planet of the Apes” franchise. While “The Fall Guy,” a funny, well-cast … Continue reading →

One of the hallmarks of a classic film is the way it impacted the cinema of its day and all the movies on its subject that followed. “Citizen Kane” changed the movies. “Stagecoach” became the benchmark of Westerns. And marriage, … Continue reading →

This comic thriller about a gullible little old lady who gets mixed up in things way beyond her experience of the world co-stars Richard Roundtree, Parker Posey, Clark Gregg and Fred Hechinger and opens June 21.

It is one of the hoariest conventions in screen thrillers. Round up a bunch of people, some of them armed and dangerous. Park them in a roadside diner, and see what happens. The classic “The Petrified Forest,” based on a … Continue reading →

“Innocuous, predictable and well-cast” is about all the praise “Mother of the Bride” warrants, unless you consider another movie featuring the lovely scenery of Phuket, Thailand a deal-maker. Looking for laughs in this Brooke Shields comedy is like panning for … Continue reading →

The phrase “spectacularly pointless” hangs over the tenth “Planet of the Apes” movie, a stand-alone sequel to “War for the Planet of the Apes,” which came out seven years ago. Granted, I was thinking “umpteenth” in terms of the actual … Continue reading →

An AMC multiplex in Durham, N.C., close enough to shout “Dook SUX” to the children of entitlement  who attend. I’ve been going to these movies based on the Pierre Boulle parable since Roddy McDowell and Jim Hunter mastered the prosthetic … Continue reading →