Category Archives: Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news

The Taiwanese drama “Reclaim” is something of an upside down “Joy Luck Club.” It’s not about Chinese American immigrants, or daughters who come to realize all that their Chinese mothers went through to get them better lives. Writer-director CJ Wang … Continue reading →

One of the stranger film’s of Robert Altman’s vagabond career, and perhaps the least “Altmanesque,” is a small-cast horror tale shot on an Irish location, barely released in the U.S. and “lost” for decades — supposedly because Columbia Pictures destroyed … Continue reading →

Visionary writer-director Terry Gilliam‘s “Quixotic” thirty year pursuit of getting his idea for a Don Quixote movie on screen ended a couple of years ago when “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” finally premiered and went on to a desultory … Continue reading →

Wow. Never have I ever seen more cinematic “wow” wasted on a bad action script than this Korean cavalcade of crap. “Carter” has a sky-diving fight that out Tom Cruises every “Mission: Impossible.” It has a bloodbath in a bathhouse, … Continue reading →

If you’ve seen “Nope,” you recall Jordan Peele’s clever, folkloric connection of the characters in his latest film to the “inventor” of cinema, Eadweard Muybridge. The stunt-horse training family under alien assault on a remote Southern Cal horse ranch — … Continue reading →

This doc about a quarterback who became a symbol opens Sept. 2.

There’s a gloriously workmanlike quality to everything about Ron Howard’s fine film of the famous Tham Lunag cave rescue in Thailand, “Thirteen Lives.” It’s one of those real-life thrillers like Eastwood’s “Sully” or Howard’s own “Apollo 13,” a celebration of … Continue reading →

“Buba” is a spinoff movie from a comic German TV series titled “How to Sell Drugs Online Fast,” which I’ve not seen. So when I say I kind of got into the film’s dark, masochistic comic vibe but found it … Continue reading →

Jesus, I hate bad dialogue. Even in a torture porn C-movie, it grates. It’s not that one doesn’t notice the pitiless, pointless slaughter, the heartless cruelty and bad acting. Idiotic plot? Let’s throw that in, too. But bad lines badly-delivered? … Continue reading →

“The Road” is one of the most evocative two word titles in all of cinema. It brings up memories of Fellini’s Italian road picture, “La Strada,” the romance of “Two for the Road,” the adaptation of Kerouac’s “On the Road,” … Continue reading →