Category Archives: Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news

“Anya” begins with a love story, and we don’t believe it for a second. Its moments of whimsy have a forced, static quality, and never feel anything but scripted, contrived and stiff. But taken as science fiction, which is what … Continue reading →

Imagine a low-budget movie whose characters take “The Matrix” a little too seriously. They think we’re all living in “The Matrix,” a vast computer program that has just enough glitches in it to give us clues about what’s going on. … Continue reading →

Variety has the news that a 1969 Harlem music festival, contemporaneous to Woodstock, will be the subject of this compilation doc and history lesson. Fresh live footage of Nina Simone and Sly and the Family Stone? I’m down. https://t.co/XZxuROwRIc https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1201516548692873216?s=20

Rhetorical question, of course.

I’m not quite satisfied with that headline for this review. Remind me to return to that and have another go encapsulating “I Lost My Body,” the strangest animated offering you’ll see on Netflix this year. It’s a memory play, a … Continue reading →

I said, in my very first review of a “Netflix Original,” back when the DVD turned streaming service was getting into acquiring and distributing its own movies, that intimate indie films should be their bread and butter. They don’t cost … Continue reading →

A group therapy period piece with an all-star cast, including Julianna Margulies and Jane Alexander, “Three Christs” follows an early attempt at “understanding the delusions” of three men in a mental hospital in 1950s Michigan. Peter Dinklage, Bradley Whitford and … Continue reading →

  Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” his epic telling of one mobster’s rise through the ranks to the moment Jimmy Hoffa disappeared, is his coda, his final statement on the mob movies he built his career on. It’s Scorese’s “Unforgiven,” a … Continue reading →

Here’s what the holiday romance “Holly Star” has going for it. There’s an exotic setting — coastal Maine at Christmas. The heroine, Sloan (Katlyn Carlson), has an unusual career. She’s abunraku stick-puppet puppeteer. Speaking from experience as a journalist, I … Continue reading →

In your typical legal thriller, John Grisham or Scott Turow steer us from explosive twist to twist, finishing with a courtroom coup de grace and some version of justice achieved. But in the real world, the law can involve tedious … Continue reading →