Category Archives: Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news

Movie Preview: What do we make of Alison Brie and Dave Franco “Together” in, um, canine form?

Brie and Franco, married in real life, play a couple drifting apart until something rural and supernatural intervenes. August 1, this romantically werewolfy horror comedy comes out.

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Movie Review: Body Builder is on the Spectrum, Steroided Up and Dangerously Obsessed with his “Magazine Dreams”

Labeling Jonathan Majors‘s turn in “Magazine Dreams” “deeply disturbing” is the epitome of understatement. He plays a body builder whose on-the-spectrum awkwardness and his obsession with building his body and competing with it, an obsession augmented with mood-altering steroids, puts … Continue reading

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BOX OFFICE: “Snow White” opens big(ish), but underwhelms, “Alto Knights” Bomb

Is the fact that they cast a Latina actress, Rachel Zegler, as “Snow White” scaring off racist parents? Does knowing Disney chose to CGI its way around casting actual dwarf actors — there are many, and Peter Dinklage is merely … Continue reading

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Movie Review: “Snow White” and her Singing CGI Pals Don’t Get the Job Done

There’s nothing inherently wrong with Disney’s recent practice of remaking its animated musical classics as live action films. Reviving a timeless story for a new generation and getting more value out of a long-treasured piece of intellectual property is to … Continue reading

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Movie Review: De Niro vs. De Niro in Levinson’s “The Alto Knights”

For his latest feat, Oscar winning screen legend Robert De Niro plays two roles, as rival Mafia leaders Frank Costello and Vito Genovese at the mob’s late 1950s peak. Another word for “feat” might be “stunt” or “gimmick” in the … Continue reading

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Movie Preview: Bang and Sevigny, Lily McInerny and Sailing off the South of France: “Bonjour Tristesse”

A 1954 romance by Françoise Sagan is what inspired actress and sometime producer Durga Chew-Bose to become a first time writer-director. Otto Preminger made a film out of “Hello Sadness” (the title’s translation) in the ’50s, with Jean Seberg, Deborah … Continue reading

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Movie Review: Can “The Ugly Stepsister” make that Glass Slipper fit?

Yes, let’s have a “Cinderella” without the spin. Pound home the “princess” as beauty bias messaging with body horror driven by body dysphoria. And make it splatter film bloody, sexually explicit and occasionally funny — laughs with a grimace of … Continue reading

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Movie Preview: Remembering when Zambia and Zimbabwe were Racist Rhodesia — “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight”

Screen veteran Embeth Davidtz (just seen in “Retribution,” in “Old” and a regular on “Ray Donovan”) moves behind the camera for this adaptation of an Alexandra Fuller novel. The South African Davidtz would seem to be an apt choice in … Continue reading

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Movie Preview: Nostalgic for the “Weeds” days of illegal marijuana — “Grassland”

A mother and daughter grow their own to make ends meet, then a cop moves in downstairs. It’s 2008, and paranoia was totally justified in “Grassland.” They’re playing up the fact that Oscar winner Common produced this. Rachel Ticotin, Mia … Continue reading

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Documentary Review: Zookeepers get in touch with their feelings caring for a famous Korean panda — “My Dearest Bao”

The departure of a beloved giant panda, sent home from Koreo to China to propogate this endangered species, becomes a most touching farewell as we mourn her leaving with the two zookeepers who cared for her in “My Dearest Fu … Continue reading

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