Tag Archives: film

Movie Review: An Actor finds the Meaning of His Calling working as “Rental Family”

Just when you think Japanese culture could not seem more strange and exotic, along comes another movie reminder that the “problems” have a different gravitas over there, and the solutions to them can be downright ingenius. Little shrines decorate the … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: A New Yorker widowed by a Police Shooting seeks Justice in “Aftershock: The Nicole P. Bell Story”

An infamous police shooting leads to trials and a search for justice that doesn’t end in a courtroom in “Aftershock” The Nicole P. Bell Story.” It’s a sturdy, often moving fil built aroud Rayven Symone Ferrell’s affecting performance in the … Continue reading →

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Documentary Review: Australia’s Oscar hopes rely on Mongolians who know “The Wolves Always Come at Night”

“The Wolves Always Come at Night” is an evocative immersion in a dying way of life, that of nomadic Mongolian goat, horse and cattle herders. Gabrielle Brady’s documentary captures the stark beauty of the treeless brownscape of the Mongolian steppes, … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: A Mother’s Past and Present Blur “When Fall is Coming”

François Ozon has to be the French cinema’s premier poker player. With his genre-bending/expectations-upending dramas (“Everything Went Fine”), dramedies (“In the House”), feminist comedies (“Potiche”) and musical drama mysteries (“8 Women”), you’d hate to be seated at the same table … Continue reading →

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Classic Film Review: A Reporter digs into government scandals real and staged — “Defence of the Realm” (1985)

It’s odd to think of the ’80s as a movie decade in which we can bandy the phrase “They don’t make’em like that any more” about. Hollywood’s blockbuster obsession almost wholly took over, and the roman numeralization of cinema “franchises” … Continue reading →

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Netflixable? “Being Eddie” is how Murphy wants you to See Him

Eddie Murphy has a lot to be satisfied with. A gifted mimic turned overnight stand-up star, famous since his teen years on “Saturday Night Live,” a ground-breaking African American superstar of the screen, for decades one of the biggest box … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: A Torch and a Card Trick are passed to a new Generation — “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t”

It helps to think of the “Now You See Me” film franchise as a manga that dodged the whole anime series then anime movie “product” assembly line. “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” brought on that epiphany. Revived a … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: “The Running Man” Stumbles into a Dead End

About thirty minutes into the Glen Powell/Edgar Wright remake of “The Running Man” I thought “This is kind of working.” I invested in this updating of Stephen King’s dytopian sci-fi horror for the age of ICE, fascism and murderously amoral … Continue reading →

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Classic Film Review: Lesser Lubitsch, a “Heaven Can Wait” (1943) that Bores

When we think of the Hollywood comedies by the great German expat Ernst Lubitsch, we remember Garbo at her drollest, a Bolshevik who falls in love in “Ninotchka,” the doors-slamming-on-Nazis backstage farce “To Be or Not to Be” and the … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Exiled Man and Woman wrestle with their Pasts on “The Silent Planet”

“The Silent Planet” is a sci-fi allegory that attempts to take the pulse of the human condition in our current, fear-immigrants moment and doesn’t quite come off. One can appreciate the cleverness of seeing The Tablelands in Canada’s Gros Morne … Continue reading →

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