Category Archives: Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news

Netflixable? A critical piece of “erased” history — “The Chickasaw Rancher”

A tip of the cowboy hat to Netflix, for picking up this Chickasaw Nation-financed drama and offering it during Native American Heritage Month. “Montford: The Chickasaw Rancher,” is about a 19th century member of the Chickasaw Nation who became a … Continue reading →

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Classic Film Review: Siblings Star in an Essential Western — Walter Hill’s “The Long Riders” (1980)

It’s the story of the James-Younger Gang told in stately, sweeping vistas, star charisma, cold-blooded stares and bursts of epic Peckinpah violence. “The Long Riders” came out in 1980, in the middle of director Walter Hill’s run of genre classics … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: A dead journalist and an urban legend, “El hombre bufalo (The Buffalo Man)” from Mexico

That headline’s dead-on accurate and ridiculously misleading. It makes this indie, arty, obscurant drama from Mexico sound like something it’s not, which is interesting. Editor and first-time feature writer-director David Torres sets out to tell a simple, sad story about … Continue reading →

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Netflixable? Chinese “Zero to Hero” plays the heartstrings

“Zero to Hero” is a heartwarming story of a paralympian, the obstacles he has to overcome and the mother behind him every tentative step, all the way to the finish line. This Around the World with Netflix offering is about … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: A Hockey Goon Meets his Match with these “Ankle Biters”

The debut feature from writer-director Bennet De Brabandere was titled “Cherrypicker” for a while and renamed “Ankle Biters” for release. But while he cleverly-retitled this story of a hockey goon who runs afoul of his girlfriend’s four 7-and-under daughters, he … Continue reading →

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Documentary Review: “Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time,” filmmaker stuck on Kurt

Writer, wit and craftsman, science fiction icon and cultural iconoclast, Kurt Vonnegut‘s long and storied career saw him climb from penny-pinching obscurity to celebrity, wealth and fame, a novelist whose every book remains in print and whose pithiest remarks have … Continue reading →

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Netflixable? Human trafficking boiled down to “7 Prisoners”

Today’s “Around the World with Netflix” outing is a gritty, suspenseful Brazilian drama about human trafficking and what the trafficked do at the end of that ugly road. Alexandre Moratto’s “7 Prisoners” takes us for a ride — the same … Continue reading →

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Movie Preview: “Mothering Sunday” happens when servants play while the employers are away

A sexy period piece (1924) with Oscar winners Olivia Colman and Colin Firth as the employers who are away leaving Odessa Young to carry on with Josh O’Connor. It’s based on a Graham Swift novel, and features one other Oscar … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: A Culkin-free “Home Sweet Home Alone”

Say what you want, but I LIKE this version of Ellie Kemper. The ever-sweetly-smiling plucky ditz of “The Office” and “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” goes kind of, well, bad-ass for “Home Sweet Home Alone.” And that’s fun because in this … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Romania satirizes itself in “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn”

Wherever film satire has traveled in the past half century, there’s something seriously retrograde in Rada Jude’s film festival darling “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn.” I wracked my memory banks while watching it, trying to summon up a film … Continue reading →

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