Category Archives: Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news

“EO” is an odd animal’s life odyssey that takes the point of view of its mute, occasionally-braying title character, a donkey. It’s a picaresque adventure never far from the dark shadow that hangs over domesticated animals in the service of … Continue reading →

Scrawny, cadaverous and creepy, actor Javier Botet has graced many a chilling moment in Hollywood horror films — “The Mummy” and “It” and “Conjuring 2” among them. The man has a marketable “look.” But he achieves something like a break-out … Continue reading →

Top tip for watching “Lesson Plan (Plan lekcji),” a new thriller available on Netflix in its original Polish (with subtitles) or dubbed into English. Don’t look away from the screen to check your phone or dash into the kitchen for … Continue reading →

If you like your horror movies slasher-graphic and Ancient Greece demonic, has Shudder got a thriller for you. Well-cast, cleverly plotted and just psychological and suspenseful enough, “A Wounded Fawn”is a serial killer thriller with an art world setting and … Continue reading →

Of course, the QUADRUPLE threat who just passed WON her Oscar for writing a song, not acting in a film, singing in a film and dancing in a film. She co-wrote the lyrics to “What a Feeling.”

When you’re forced to serve up cinematic cheese, a certain enthusiasm in the performance can atone for some of the sins of the screenplay. That’s the nice way to get into “Fantasy Football,” a kids’ movie about a tech nerd/gamer … Continue reading →

The characters are always alone and lonely, the leads are always lovely but bland, the settings snowy and the “secrets” nothing to summon gentleman detective Benoit Blanc over. But holiday romances of the Hallmark school — a market Netflix has … Continue reading →

There have been several films titled “Girl with a Gun” or something very near that. It’s catchy, alliterative and tells you what you think you need to know in just a couple of words. There’s an attractive younger woman, and … Continue reading →

“The Swimmers” is an old-fashioned against-all-odds sports drama set against the dramatic backdrop of Europe’s Middle Eastern refugee crisis. Director and co-writer Sally El Hosaini makes this conventionally unconventional “feel good” story of the Mardini sisters‘ trials and triumphs entertaining, … Continue reading →

“Darkling” is a grimly disturbing drama about grief, psychotic stubbornness and paranoia set in the murderous ethnic strife of the 1990s Bosnian War. A Serbian farmer (Slavko Stivac) is hole- up on his rural Kosovo farm, barring the doors and … Continue reading →