Tag Archives: film

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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Movie Review: A First Date Dominated by a Cell Phone and a Stranger’s “Drop”

Posted on April 11, 2025 by Roger Moore

A tony, high-rise restaurant filled with potential suspects, any one of whom might “airdrop” the threats and blackmailed instructions for a murder onto our shocked and frantic heroine’s cell phone, is the setting and plot of “Drop,” a middling horror … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Malek schemes and turns the screws as “The Amateur”

Posted on April 11, 2025 by Roger Moore

A good cast and a clever variation of the man with “particular skills” revenge thriller formula make “The Amateur” an often entertaining slice of spy games hokum. Rami Malek stars as a CIA crypto analayst and tinkerer who becomes obsessed … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Modern “Warfare,” up close and impersonal

Posted on April 11, 2025 by Roger Moore

The big selling point of “Warfare” is its recreation of the “reality” of combat in the Middle East by a former Navy SEAL who was there. But there have been scores of documentaries made by embedded filmmakers who detailed the … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: An all-star Animated tale of “The King of Kings,” as told by Charles Dickens

Posted on April 9, 2025 by Roger Moore

“The King of Kings” is a compact, cute Life of Jesus served up in animated form for parents to take their kids to this Easter. An all-star voice cast decorates a beautifully animated offering from Angel Studios, produced as the … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: “A Minecraft Movie,” whether we need it or not

Posted on April 4, 2025 by Roger Moore

Say this much for Warner Brothers. They got the tone for “Minecraft” right. The studio that turned Scandinavian Lego building block toys into blockbuster animated movies goes all juvenile in adapting Sweden’s biggest gift to pop culture since ABBA, and … Continue reading →

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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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