Category Archives: Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news

Sometimes your homework on a film takes you back to first principles. Is “American Gadfly” a documentary, or is it a mockumentary? The pitch from a publicist hired by the self-distributing filmmakers had me befuddled. Senator Mike Gravel? From Alaska? … Continue reading →

“Belle” is an ambitious anime fantasy with gorgeous, dreamy, CGI-assisted eye-candy images illustrating a somewhat cumbersome marriage of sci-fi and fairytale fantasy. It is grounded in a classic Japanese anime setting — a rural, mountainside town and high school. But … Continue reading →

The most complete exhibition ever of Dylan as visual artist shows him a sort of imitation  Edward Hopper of Hibbing, with a heavy dose of Van Gogh and a hint of late period Winslow Homer. This Bob Dylan the Visual … Continue reading →

Jared Leto’s “Morbius” pulled out of January today. Just three major titles are set to open wide on Jan. thanks to the latest unvaccinated spike in the pandemic. “The 355” this week, “Redeeming Love” 1/21 and “Scream” (1/14) are all … Continue reading →

If there’s a better recent piece of cinematic plot problem-solving than the compact thriller “See for Me,” I must’ve missed it. This tight, tense and oh-so-logical home invasion tale brings “Wait Until Dark” into the cell phone era, with suspense … Continue reading →

The South African CGI animation house Triggerfish (“Zambezia”) makes its Netflix debut with “Seal Team,” an animated action comedy about seals taught to fight back against “ravenous seal-eating sharks” by a grizzled HMMF (Hydro-Marine-Military-Force) trained walrus We see seals not … Continue reading →

You’d think we’d have all picked up on this by now. But maybe the annual showings, the “tradition” of watching Frank Capra’s masterful Jimmy Stewart/Donna Reed tear-jerker, has drained it of its meaning. We watch a sentimental black and white … Continue reading →

This echoes with the memory and spirit if not the voice of the late Chadwick Boseman, and teases around the edges of the Nov. 22 release — pomp, circumstance, gravitas, a new villain and a car. “Black Panther” was his … Continue reading →

Don’t know how I missed catching “The Colditz Story” on this or that cable channel over the years. I saw many of its 1950s Brit-film WWII classics — “The Dam Busters,””Dunkirk,” “Bridge on the River Kwai” — but never the … Continue reading →

The gold mine that George Lucas first tunneled keeps paying benefits to the House of Mouse that bought it, which has found leftover value in the whole bounty hunter supporting character thing with “The Mandalorian” and “The Book of Boba … Continue reading →