Category Archives: Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news

Film critics are like baseball umpires. Right and wrong are relative, so “consistency” is what matters. If I panned the original “Top Gun,” kicked its sequel “Maverick” and torched the Chinese knockoff “Born to Fly,” it’s not as if I’m … Continue reading →

Max Patkin had been “The Clown Prince of Baseball” for 40 years before “Bull Durham” came along and preserved his act for all time. Writer-director Ron Shelton, a former minor league infielder, remembers basically building his Kevin Costner/Susan Sarandon/Tim Robbins … Continue reading →

A wary unease hangs over “Shayda,” the debut feature film of Iranian-born filmmaker Noora Niasari. In simplest terms, it’s a domestic melodrama, a story of a custody fight against the Islamic patriarchy of fundamentalist Iran. But what the viewer absorbs … Continue reading →

The Crockett Johnson novel makes the journey to the big screen with Zachary Levi in the title role, Zooey Deschanel, Lil Rel Howery, Jemaine Clement and Alfred Molina. The kid-simple gimmick is that anything Harold draws can come to life. … Continue reading →

A noteworthy political life gets lost in its details in “Shirley,” a Netflix bio-pic about the first African American Congresswoman and first African American woman to run for president, Shirley Chisholm. Veteran TV director (“Barbershop,””Guerilla”) and novelist John Ridley landed … Continue reading →

For about 45 minutes — roughly the length of the first act — Jake Gyllenhaal and “Edge of Tomorrow/Fair Game/American Made” director Doug Liman let us know that whatever the glories of Patrick Swayze’s crowd-pleasing bouncer dramedy, their version of … Continue reading →

The Big Anime Eyes of Anya Taylor-Joy take over this trailer to what looks like another epic in the string of epics Aussie George Miller has made — going back about 40 years — on the same subject. A post-World … Continue reading →

This debut feature from David Cronenberg’s daughter, whose prior filmmaking credits were “camera and electrical department” (Apprenticeship?) gigs, looks plenty dark and screwy. Jay Baruchel, Emily Hampshie, Peter Gallagher, Enrico Colantoni and Alanna Bale star, and is that Isabella Rossellini’s … Continue reading →

Sept. 6. Keaton and Ryder and Jenna Ortega and Willem Dafoe and O’Hara.

David Krumholtz is a once promising animator facing a terminal diagnosis and the world’s callous indifference in “Lousy Carter,” a droll “My midlife crisis is death” comedy set in academia. The sort of fellow who’d accept and adopt as his … Continue reading →