Tag Archives: movie-review

Movie Review: V-Day Romance Slathered with Slaughter — “Heart Eyes”

A clever-enough conceit, engaging leads and a masked villain of the Jason/Michael Myers/”Scream” variety might be enough to recommend “Heart Eyes,” a “rom com for Valentine’s Day” for the splatter film crowd. Hey, everybody needs a “date movie,” right? It’s … Continue reading

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Classic Film Review: The Sexual Sensory Overload of “Black Narcissus” (1947)

Long regarded as “the most beautiful film ever shot in color,” Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s “Black Narcissus” remains a feast for the eyes, one unspoiled by the knowlege that most every dazzling image put on the screen was manipulated, … Continue reading

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Movie Review: Whatever you do, Don’t Give “Jade” a Blade

“Cool” is the lifeblood of an indie thriller. Park your tale in a novel “cool” setting. Serve up a “cool” heist/scheme/plot, preferably with epic brawls, chases or shootouts. Cast a cool heavy. But even if you ignore or narrowly miss … Continue reading

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Netflixable? A Disabled Child, a Mom Determined to Save Him — “Lucca’s World”

A guilt-ridden journalist tries everything, grasping at any “miracle treatments” straw, in an effort to save her disabled-at-birth son in “Lucca’s World,” an engrossing Around the World with Netflix weeper from Mexico. Based on the non-fiction book by Bárbara Anderson, … Continue reading

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

“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”

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”

“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)

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”

“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”

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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