Category Archives: Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news

“Runt” is a sweet and ever so slight Aussie farm country comedy in the “Babe” tradition. There’s a drought. A family might lose their farm and sheep to it or the greedy old neighbor with the onomatopoeia name “Robert Barren.” … Continue reading →

My utter disillusionment with the Oscars started early and has rarely been given cause to turn back to hope in the ensuing decades. This week, TCM showed a couple of classics, back to back, that took me right back to … Continue reading →

“Accused” is a “#MeToo” thriller set in the world of medicine, a mystery built around a married doctor accused of sexual indiscretions and the tests that imposes on her same sex marriage. It barely has a pulse as a thriller, … Continue reading →

As more than one wag has put it, there were something like “300 people” who made the “Swinging Sixties” era in London swing. But for all the complaining about “Boomer nostalgia” in describing that watershed age, bloody few of the … Continue reading →

Kristin Scott Thomas lends her serene upper class sheen and effortless elegance to “My Mother’s Wedding,” her directing debut about three wildly different daughters showing up for Mum’s late life nuptials. She persuaded her “Horse Whisperer” and “The Other Boleyn … Continue reading →

The little girl repeats her grandmother’s directions as she writes down the recipe. “Three eggs for fertility,” she says. “One kilo of fliur for life. Five hundred grams of sugar for a sweet life. And baking powder…for a fluffy cake.” … Continue reading →

Flashes of anarchic wit and the odd zinger or sight gag brighten up “Operation Taco Gary’s,” an indie sci-fi farce in the tradition of “Safety Not Guaranteed” that plays like a redneck “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” The debut feature … Continue reading →

Priyanka Chopra Jonas furies through fight choreography and Karl Urban makes a worthy villain even if all the CGI in the world can’t make Australia look like “the Caribbean” in the the brutish, humorless pirate picture “The Bluffs.” Co-writers Joe … Continue reading →

Impressive stunts, car chases and crashes and creative ways of killing compete with a laughable collection of cute action “comedy” cliches in the French thriller “The Orphans” (“Les orphelins”). It’s essentially an Alban Lenoir/ Dali Benssalah “buddy” picture in the … Continue reading →

The great Irish character actor Brendan Gleeson was a mere lad — a slip of a thing — when he “burst” on the cinema scene in the mid-’90s. Ah, who’re we kidding? He was a great, grand and jolly galoot … Continue reading →