Tag Archives: film

Movie Review: A Dark Period in Korean History Remembered — “Harbin”

Posted on April 2, 2025 by Roger Moore

“Harbin” is a stately, somewhat tense Korean period piece bathed in the gloom that hangs over many an espionage thriller. Director and co-writer Woo Min-ho already has conventional thrillers (“The Drug King”), period piece thrillers (“The Man Standing Next”) and … Continue reading →

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Series Review: Is this any way to run “The Studio?”

Posted on April 1, 2025 by Roger Moore

If you’re a movie buff, of COURSE you’re loading up that trial subscription to Apple TV+ to catch “The Studio,” a cinema-loving and best-joke-on-set-wins silly spin on the messy way movies are made and the sniveling, lying cowards who make … Continue reading →

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Classic Film Review: Luis Buñuel serves up Colonialism’s “Death in the Garden” (1956)

Posted on March 30, 2025 by Roger Moore

Of all the “star entrances” the classic cinema has given us, from the “Stagecoach” rolling up on stranded John Wayne to Orson Welles, glimpsed in the shadows in “The Third Man” and Marlene Dietrich, dolled up and ready to sing … Continue reading →

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Classic Film Review: Serious and Seldom Seen Sellers — “The Blockhouse” (1973)

Posted on March 27, 2025 by Roger Moore

Filmed on the whim of a liquor empire heir, a “true story” whose German Army WWII victims were changed to French and citizens of other occupied countries, “The Blockhouse” is one of the strangest titles in the later, quixotic career … Continue reading →

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Classic Film Review: Michael Mann invents ’80s Cinema — “Thief” (1981)

Posted on March 22, 2025 by Roger Moore

It’s only in retrospect that we recognize the watershed films, the ones that signaled the end of one era and the beginning of another. Michael Mann’s feature film debut “Thief” earned decent enough reviews when it was released in March … Continue reading →

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

Posted on March 22, 2025 by Roger Moore

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

Posted on March 22, 2025 by Roger Moore

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 Review: Surviving “Last Tango,” “Being Maria”

Posted on March 18, 2025 by Roger Moore

The scene, like the movie it dominates, was infamous before anybody outside of the production had seen it. The movie was stilted, strange, shocking and controversial, even in the hypersexualized “art cinema” of the ’70s. And the title, “Last Tango … Continue reading →

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Netflixable? Millie Bobby meets The Russo Brothers — “The Electric State”

Posted on March 17, 2025 by Roger Moore

If it takes the bottomless checkbook of Netflix to finally make the fangirls and fanboys recognize what merde merchants the filmmaking Russo brothers are, so be it. Famed for making the expensive trains run on time in effects heavy Marvel … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Noisy Zombies spoil the Peace and Quiet of “Silent Zone”

Posted on March 16, 2025 by Roger Moore

There was a time when zombies were slow and the movies about them were quick. The walking dead would lurch into sight and characters would have to go out of their way to trip or somehow be trapped by the … Continue reading →

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