Category Archives: Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news

“Parallax” is a mysterious, no-budget sci-fi story of identity and its manipulation, a movie that lives on mood and tone. Writer-director Michael Bachochin crosses the line from “cryptic and obscure” to “obscurist”early on. And when the film finally reveals its … Continue reading →

He won an Oscar for scoring Quentin Tarantino’s lesser send-up of the genre, “The Hateful Eight.” But the great Italian film composer Ennio Morricone made his mark on the cinema in the ’60s, scoring the Italian-made/Spanish-filmed Westerns of Sergio Leone … Continue reading →

“The F**k-It List?” What a crock of s**t. An “edgy” teen comedy bereft of laughs, wrapped in “life lessons” and nestled in privilege, it is as infuriating an entry in the “graduation” genre as Hollywood has produced. That’s an important … Continue reading →

If “The Tobacconist” didn’t put veteran Austrian TV director Nikolas Leytner into therapy, he must be a stronger soul than we mere mortals. He had a best-selling novel by Robert Seethaler as material, Vienna “between the World Wars” as his … Continue reading →

Rewatching Christopher Nolan’s break out picture. A guy who loses his memories overnight, and tattoos clues on his person to allow him to pursue and punish his tormentors? Ok. Joey Pants as a weasel who flatters and ingratiates himself and … Continue reading →

There are no “wholly original” stories out there, only fresh variations of all that came before them. Every plot is a version of something dating back to “the classics.” Every character a new wrinkle of classic archetypes. Every novel, play, … Continue reading →

So here I was, eye-strained from all the eye-rolling at the pretty and utterly vapid Italian beach romance “Under the Riccione Sun,” ready to UNLOAD on it with this opening. “If you missed out on how dry and empty American … Continue reading →

Kevin Rafferty’s most acclaimed documentary, “Atomic Cafe,” was selected for preservation by the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry. It was about America’s atomic testing legacy. Harvard educated, a relative of the Bush clan, he made a very entertaining sports … Continue reading →

Writer-director Ash Mayfair made a modest splash with her artful, serenely suspenseful “The Third Wife,”about a child bride’s experiences in 19th century Vietnam, and loosely based on Mayfair’s family’s 19th century history. The 14 year-old bride, May (Nguyen Phuong Tra … Continue reading →

Dame Helen Mirren sits at a desk and begins reading aloud from a book — a diary. The desk is in the room in “The Annex” in Amsterdam, the very room where Anne Frank and her family hid from the … Continue reading →