Category Archives: Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news

Our first glimpse of the “Maestro” almost takes one’s breath away. It’s an older Leonard Bernstein — tanned, weathered, familiar mop of unkempt white hair, omnipresent cigarette smoldering within reach, playing a somewhat atonal modern piece at the piano, his … Continue reading →

I’ve had a soft spot for Mexican cinema star, director and producer Eugenio Derbez ever since his North American breakthrough, playing a “Dad” out of his depth with a tiny kid in “Intructions Not Included.” His Hollywood-produced projects have been … Continue reading →

In his prime, the 1940s to the 1960s, Kirk Douglas only made a couple of films that would have tipped his fans that he was born Issur Herschelevitch Danielovitch, and that among the things his name-change brushed over was his … Continue reading →

Netflix wasn’t going to get its hands on Disney’s “Star Wars” intellectual property in any form any time soon. But Zack Snyder apparently had this “Star Wars” pitch that he could rewrite into something “original,” a two-film two part saga, … Continue reading →

“Sitting in Bars with Cake” is a cutesy but limp rom-com with a heaping helping of “Big Sick” seriousness meant to knock us down off a sugar high it never achieves. Based on a memoir by Audrey Schulman and thus … Continue reading →

François Ozon’s latest is a period piece about “a bad actress” and a bad or at least unscrupulous lady lawyer who use a false murder accusation as a way to gin up publicity and score feminist points for equality. Shockingly, the … Continue reading →

Composer, Broadway icon, America’s Conductor, champion of orchestral music, New York landmark, poster boy for Tom Wolfe’s “Radical Chic,”Leonard Bernstein WAS classical music in America for much of his celebrated tenure at the New York Philharmonic. He was the first … Continue reading →

Literary devices and constructions don’t always translate easily to the screen. And the current screenwriter obsession with making many a script play out in “chapters,” denoted in pointlessly distracting onscreen graphics, is one of the clunkiest. Even when you’re adapting … Continue reading →

“This Sporting Life” sets up as a formulaic hardscrabble “rise and fall of a sports hero” drama, the tale of a miner who gets his first taste of success and the “good life” of the English upper classes via stardom … Continue reading →

At this point in Dreamworks’ “Trolls” enterprise, the adult thing to say is “Just give the kids what they want.” “Trolls Band Together” has a few chuckles, an inane plot and an NSYNC reunion to top off another sing-along-with-the-living-toys comedy … Continue reading →