Tag Archives: film

Movie Review: Same ol’ “Mortal Kombat,” but Urban adds a little Humor — “Mortal Kombat II”

Posted on May 8, 2026 by Roger Moore

Video game fans seem to never tire of film adaptations of beloved big screen throwbacks to their misspent youth. The movies are often plotless, just collections of quips and a parade of indifferently tied-together scenes with this or that beloved … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: A Stand-up Comic’s last “line” of defense — “Is This Thing On?”

Posted on May 4, 2026 by Roger Moore

The trailers to “Is This Thing On?” had me hyped to catch it during its awards season run. Will Arnett, one of the funniest actors to hold a SAG card, playing a midlife crisis character who copes by trying his … Continue reading →

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Netflixable? June Squibb is “Eleanor the Great”

Posted on April 22, 2026 by Roger Moore

Timing, especially in comedy, is everything. But Sony Pictures Classics had no way of knowing that its Oscar-campaigned Jewish Holocaust dramedy “Eleanor the Great” would come out in the middle of worldwide outrage at an ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza. … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: “I Was a Stranger” and You Welcomed Me

Posted on January 4, 2026 by Roger Moore

Just when you think that you’ve seen and heard all sides of the human migration debate, and long after you fear that the cruel, the ignorant and the scapegoaters have won that shouting match, a film comes along and defies … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: “Psycho Therapy: The Shallow Tale of a Writer Who Decided to Write about a Serial Killer”

Posted on January 2, 2026 by Roger Moore

Sometimes a film title says it all, or at least entirely too much. Turkish filmmaker Tolga Karaçelik blunders into that truism all too eagerly with his American feature film debut — a comic thriller he deigned to over-label “Psycho Therapy: … Continue reading →

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Classic Film Review: Hitchcock “adapts” to Talkies — “East of Shanghai” (aka “Rich and Strange”) (1931)

Posted on January 1, 2026 by Roger Moore

It came as a surprise for me, and probably shouldn’t have, that Alfred Hitchcock’s transition to sound from silent cinema took more than a film or two and more than a year or two. Hitchcock was half a dozen films … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: What Makes “Marty Supreme?”

Posted on December 27, 2025 by Roger Moore

New York filmmaker Josh Safdie has his fans, and I’ve been one of them at times. At other times? Not so much. He does underbelly-of-the-city stories well. “Good Time” was something of a reinvention of the possibilities of Robert Pattinson. … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Kirby Howell-Baptiste is our Tour Guide among “We Strangers”

Posted on December 23, 2025 by Roger Moore

A hint of the inscrutable can do service to any film in any genre, and it pays off some surprising ways in “We Strangers,” an oddball domestic dramedy about a “domestic” and the dizzy white folks who hire her. Veteran … Continue reading →

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Classic Film Review: “Detour” (1945), still as Noir as Film Noir Gets

Posted on December 22, 2025 by Roger Moore

“That’s life,” the anti-hero of “Detour” growls in voice-over. “Whichever way you turn, fate sticks out a foot to trip you.” Hardboiled, archetype-upending and gorgeous in its bare-bones minimalism, “Detour” is quintessential film noir. “The Maltese Falcon” preceded it and … Continue reading →

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Netflixable? Koreans face Doomsday — “The Great Flood”

Posted on December 22, 2025 by Roger Moore

Preppers, survivalists, Rapture fans and doomsday cultists may get a kick out of “The Great Flood,” a downbeat-to-the-point-of-bleak thriller about the End of Human Civilization. A young Korean mother (Kim Da-Mi) carries her six year-old (Kwon Eun-sung) up several flights … Continue reading →

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