Tag Archives: drama

Movie Review — “Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale”

Posted on September 12, 2025 by Roger Moore

Lady Mary makes one more most-unladylike sexual mistake, “Mum-MAH” dishes up one more serving of proto-feminist American common sense and one last “season” in London town is experienced for “Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale” of the highbrow British/PBS soap opera … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: “The Map that Leads to You,” via Spain, Portugal and Rome

Posted on September 9, 2025 by Roger Moore

A pretty and capable young cast and a grand tour of the sights of Northern Spain and Portugal recommend “The Map that Leads to You,” a sweet nothing of a travelogue with lots of wish fulfillment fantasy about it. Madelyn … Continue reading →

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Classic Film Review: A Ken Loach dip into Dickensiana — “Black Jack” (1979)

Posted on April 15, 2025 by Roger Moore

Ken Loach built his career on films of protest, depicting the oppressed of many places and many eras in their struggle against their oppressors. The Brit’s “socialist realism” was obvious from his breakthrough English working class classic “Kes,” with the … Continue reading →

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Richard Chamberlain: 1934-2025, Mr. Miniseries of “Thornbirds” and “Shogun” dies the day before his 91st Birthday

Posted on March 30, 2025 by Roger Moore

Richard Chamberlain, whose death was confirmed today, came to fame as a “teen idol,” the “McDreamy” of his day playing a young physician on the TV version of “Dr. Kildare.” He had a few shots at big screen stardom — … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Teachers Accuse, Debate and Judge a Mother and her Son named “Armand”

Posted on February 19, 2025 by Roger Moore

Something that happened at school is debated and “measures” are weighed and furiously argued and even experienced through interpretive dance in the challenging but slow feature filmmaking debut of Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel, the grandson of the great actress Liv Ullmann. … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Hell hath no fury like the heroine of Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths”

Posted on February 12, 2025 by Roger Moore

Pansy is a 50something Londoner in a roomy new flat that she keeps immaculate, married and wholly supported by her plumber husband of many years, Curtley. And all Pansy does, from morning til night, is “rage, rage against the dying … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Bisset still has her shimmer in “Loren & Rose”

Posted on January 23, 2025 by Roger Moore

A screen legend gives better than a lackluster indie script deserves in “Loren & Rose,” a movie about a movie-maker befriending a once-famous actress he needs to get his new movie made. Maybe there’s a bit of art-imitates-film-life in this … Continue reading →

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Classic Film Review: James Joyce by John Huston, “The Dead”(1987)

Posted on January 19, 2025 by Roger Moore

You don’t have to get old to truly appreciate John Huston’s elegiac ode to Belle Epoque Ireland and his farewell to the cinema. Wintry, wistful, funereal and poetic, James Joyce’s “The Dead” becomes a simple, short and beautiful postcard from … Continue reading →

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Classic Film Review: A Scottish Bay, a Burt and a Baby-Faced Peter Capaldi — “Local Hero” (1983)

Posted on December 31, 2024 by Roger Moore

Oh to make the pilgrimage to Pennan, flying in to Aberdeen, recreating the journey a “Local Hero” makes in perhaps the quaintest, cutest film of that golden age of excess, the ’80s. Scottish writer-director Bill Forsyth’s “Gregory’s Girl” announced to … Continue reading →

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Classic Film Review: An anti-war parable that became a landmark of Japanese cinema — “Ugetsu” (1953)

Posted on December 12, 2024 by Roger Moore

“The value of people and objects truly depends on their setting,” the potter Genjurô tells a noblewoman and patron at one point in the classic film “Ugetsu,” a Medieval fantasy based on the “Rain-Moon Tales” of 18th century writer Ueda … Continue reading →

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