Category Archives: Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news

The first important and well known Maori filmmaker, Lee Tamahori (“Once Were Warriors”)  gives us this period piece about an outsider, a preacher, out of his depth in an alien land which Europe is set on conquering and colonizing. Pearce, a … Continue reading →

Pixar’s “Inside Out” was an Oscar-winning “return to form” for the pioneering CGI animation house back in 2015, a film that found heart in attempting to visualize the emotions that guide us through childhood and make us the adults we … Continue reading →

Ving Rhames as a cop, Ron Perlman as the mayor of beantown, with Alfred Molina, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jack Harlow and Paul Walter Hauser.   Two desperate guys too old to be leading “a criminal conspiracy” like this, one of them in … Continue reading →

This 1950s period piece looks chilling, heartbreaking and uplifting. I can’t easily find any reference to the history this film may be remembering. Maori reform school? Something broader that took in “problem” girls from any race and class? And “cured” … Continue reading →

Everybody has the same idea, cinematically, all at once. “IF” and “Harold and the Purple Crayon,” and “Imaginary” and now a Netflix anime story about an imaginary…Roger? Do tell? Looks lovely. Kid friendly. And possibly insipid. July 7.

The debut feature of Spanish filmmaker Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren is an evocative immersion in a place, avocations of that place, in family and trying to figure out how one fits in all that. “20,000 Species of Bees” grabs you on … Continue reading →

Lupita and Pedro are the big names but not the only “names” in the voice cast. The design and animation are stunning, sleek. Love the messaging. The conflict shoehorned in seems a tad on the nose and over the top … Continue reading →

There’s something very attractive about this idea that we go “when it’s your time to go,” and that maybe the hereafter is a bureaucracy we can litigate our way into more time on Earth through. As fodder for fantasy, that … Continue reading →

Leaning into the logic that “parents are still taking the tykes to “Garfield” at the cinema — at least until “Inside/Out 2” opens — let’s see what this latest iteration of “The Garfield Movie” is all about. Years of TV … Continue reading →

It isn’t scary, with even the best-engineered “gotchas” landing flat. Kind of a big deal when you’re making a horror film. It’s joyless and humorless to boot, with slick production design that imagines a creature-inhabited “forest” on an island generally … Continue reading →