Tag Archives: movie-review

Movie Review: Meet your compliant and cuddly new AI robotic “Companion”

Posted on January 31, 2025 by Roger Moore

“Companion” is a horrific and caustically cautionary sci-fi thriller about how the digitized alternatives to dating might go wrong. Very wrong. Signing on an impressive cast, writer-director Drew Hancock takes a big, roundhouse swing at “coupling” in a distracted, instant … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Combat at Its most Cliched — “Valiant One”

Posted on January 31, 2025 by Roger Moore

The bar was raised on combat films decades ago. Corny, tactically sloppy flag-wavers no longer cut the mustard. And thanks to the most documentary filmed in history — Iraq and Afghanistan — it’s not just the feature films that made … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Liam and Colm, Ciarán and Kerry “In the Land of Saints and Sinners”

Posted on January 30, 2025 by Roger Moore

“In the Land of Saints and Sinners” is an embarrassment of riches, a forlorn thriller cast with many of the greatest Irish character actors of their generation and featuring the cream of the next generation of Irish leading ladies. Of … Continue reading →

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Classic Film Review: Sam Fuller’s Red Scare Noir, “Pickup on South Street” (1953)

Posted on January 29, 2025 by Roger Moore

The movies used to sentimentalize mobsters, especially during “the Wars” — WWII and the Cold one that followed. They might be cutthroats, thieves, lowlife grifters and rummies. But when it came to fascists and commies, flesh and blood threats to … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: K-Stew and Steven Yeun as the AI future of “humanity” and romance — “Love Me”

Posted on January 27, 2025 by Roger Moore

“Love Me” is an experiment in sci-fi romance that goes wrong. The pitch? Billions of years after the end of humanity, a smart buoy in the icy wasteland of Earth’s seas thaws out and makes contact with “The Messenger,” a … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: House isn’t a home when it’s haunted by a ghostly “Presence”

Posted on January 24, 2025 by Roger Moore

It’s just a haunted house story, just a movie with objects that move and things that go bump in the night. Well, mostly in broad daylight. “Presence” is a “A Ghost Story” filmed like a “Paranormal Activity” installment. And it’s … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Teacher helps a Troubled Student “Brave the Dark” of his Past

Posted on January 22, 2025 by Roger Moore

“Brave the Dark” is a earnest do-good/feel-good story of the “One Great Teacher Makes a Difference” genre. Released by Angel Studios, which brought us “Bonhoeffer,” “Sound of Freedom” and “Homestead,” where “earnest” is their brand, it’s a low-stakes, dramatically flat … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Colman Domingo plays an inmate with theatre in his blood at “Sing Sing”

Posted on January 18, 2025 by Roger Moore

Colman Domingo and the humanizing act of making theatre co-star in “Sing Sing,” a sometimes moving and often entertaining dramedy about prison inmates who just want to “put on a show.” Domingo and a couple of other professional actors, and … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Tragic, Scandalous and Recent History Remembered — “Nickel Boys”

Posted on January 18, 2025 by Roger Moore

In “Nickel Boys,” first-time feature director RaMell Ross almost overwhelms performance with technique. Characters are obscured, faces hidden, glimpsed from the legs down to their shoes, passing by in the blur of memory. By the time we set our eyes … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Awards contending “The Brutalist” punches above its weight

Posted on January 18, 2025 by Roger Moore

“The Brutalist” is a brutally smart drama for a brutally stupid age. Brady Corbet’s American saga touches on everything from classism and racism to anti-Semitism and the Holocaust as its hero staggers along the jagged edge of American capitalism as … Continue reading →

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