Category Archives: Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news

“Past Lives” is a lovely, bittersweet reverie built on a premise that flirts with fantasy. Are we “fated” to be with who we end up loving and spending our lives with, and if we are, what happens when events conspire … Continue reading →

Treat Williams broke out in “Prince of the City,” a classic righteous officer in a sea of corrupt cops picture, shone bright in “Hair,” in dramas on screen and TV. But when I heard this active, lovely, always working spirit … Continue reading →

“The Catholic School” is a story ripped from recent Italian history, the story of a heartless kidnapping, rape and murder in an age when Italian law did not consider rape a crime against a woman, but rather against the public … Continue reading →

I’m hard-pressed to think of another author in the English language whose work seemed destined for “mini series” treatment than Charles Dickens. The man wrote novels in serial form. He was literally incentivized to write long. When the serialized story … Continue reading →

Romantic comedies that work typically walk a fine line between expectations if familiarity, and surprise that delights. We have to root for the couple, even though we anticipate them rubbing each other the wrong way — at first. You can … Continue reading →

“The Blackening” is a horror farce in the tradition of the “Scary Movie” and “A Haunted House” franchises, a send-up of Black horror and Black horror movie fans. It’s fast, foul-mouthed and freaking hilarious, a spoof within a spoof filled … Continue reading →

“Midday Black Midnight Blue” is an impressionistic collage in shades of grief. Non-linear in its storytelling, stingy with its facts, details and “truth,” it’s a picture that violates a lot of the basic covenants between filmmaker and audience. It’s more … Continue reading →

“American Graffiti” was a culture-shifting blockbuster when it came out, a modestly-budgeted movie with a mostly-no-name cast that spawned a 1950s-early-’60s nostalgia boom that swam against the tide that gave birth to disco and punk. Its warmth, innocence and fun, … Continue reading →

A couple of things come to mind after watching writer-director Harold Trompetero’s “To Love is to Grow,” a Netflix comedy titled “Amar es Madurar” (Love is to Mature) when it premiered in South America. The cleverest conceit in this rom-com … Continue reading →

“Montréal Girls” is a sharply-observed, sympathetically-scripted coming-of-age story about a Middle Eastern med student who has his horizons broadened and his heart broken by the title characters, the gorgeous bilingual young women of the capital of French Canada. What director … Continue reading →