Category Archives: Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news

Hollywood’s long affair with James A. Michener, the World War II Navy veteran whose “Tales of the South Pacific” launched a Pulitzer-prize winning literary career, began with a sort of proof-of-concept film. Long before the musical “South Pacific,” United Artists, … Continue reading →

If he didn’t learn to play the accordion as prep I’ll be very disappointed in “The Chosen One.” Very disappointed. Roku has this fall release, which is great news. EVERYbody’ll see it. Well, those of us who love free (with … Continue reading →

“In a New York Minute” is a film anthology that tells three loosely-connected stories about the female Chinese-American experience in New York. It’s a melodrama that traffics in diaspora generalizations that aren’t necessarily the most flattering, and whose messaging and … Continue reading →

June 16, it’s your turn to “Go to hell.”

The Mexican “40 Years Young (Cuarentones)” is a midlife crisis romantic dramedy that’s so slow that I had to check to make sure Netflix wasn’t experiencing screen-freeze. Its 81 drab minutes pass by like a long, labored comic death rattle. … Continue reading →

Hard to get a bead on exactly what’s happening in this creepy trailer to a May 17 release. Haunted place? Haunted people? An older woman with Alzheimer’s is hunted by a horror in Herefordshire. Always alliterate.

It was a city remote enough from the rest of the world’s experience or knowledge of Chinese geography that we couldn’t place it on a map. But Wuhan’s name would enter the consciousness in infamy as a global pandemic burst … Continue reading →

Thrillers beyond number have been built on the “throw a bunch of characters together and ‘test’ them” trope. So why not “Escape the Field?” Characters wakes up in a tractless/endless corn patch, with a single sinister scarecrow watching over it. … Continue reading →

A Frenchwoman of a certain age considers the question from the US Customs officer at LAX, and speaks her mind. “I want to start a new life.” And so she sort of does, 50 and “putting herself out back there” … Continue reading →

Leave it to Sam Raimi to sidetrack the efficient but creatively flatlining Marvel money train of Avengers idolatry. Granted, the director of the sparkling, soulful original “Spider-Man” trilogy spends the first two acts of “Doctor Strange in the Universe of … Continue reading →