Tag Archives: movie-review

Movie Review: Bad Manners at a Dinner Party — “The Trouble with Jessica” is that She’s Dead

Posted on April 23, 2025 by Roger Moore

An ever-so-British dinner party goes ever-so-wrong in ever so many British ways in “The Trouble with Jessica,” a dark but twee comedy of manners. The “dark” comes from the suicide of a narcissistic, newly-published author who crashes a gathering of … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: A Robot Might Provide or Deny “The Last Spark of Hope”

Posted on April 22, 2025 by Roger Moore

Almost all science fiction is in the business of world-building, creating a landscape, setting, period in time or even “universe” where the story takes place. Dystopias engage in world-destroying. The Polish thriller “The Last Spark of Hope” manages to serve … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Viola Davis is a (literally) Embattled President trying to Survive “G20”

Posted on April 21, 2025 by Roger Moore

When it comes to action pictures, there’s “So bad that it’s good” and whatever the hell “G20” amounts to. So bad that it’s not godawful? The idea of Oscar winner Viola Davis, aka “The Woman King,” as a two-fisted, combat … 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: Pascal, Reaser, Sewell and Goggins as Hollywood “types” face their future and their humanity when they meet “The Uninvited”

Posted on April 5, 2025 by Roger Moore

Some indie films confound the viewer with a “What did these actors see in THIS?” connundrum. But not “The Uninvited.” What looks like another onanistic Hollywood-skewers-Hollywood dramedy set in a tony Hollywood Hills party is actually a priorities-questioning, expectations-upending 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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Movie Review: All Cuisine’d up, “Waiting for Dalí “

Posted on March 26, 2025 by Roger Moore

The quality of twee is often strained, the Bard wryly noted. A tragedy, a comedy or even a romantic comedy is within the reach of some writers and screenwriters. But hitting that feather-weight sweet spot between droll and cute is … Continue reading →

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Netflixable? Fatal Finnish Funny Business comes to “Little Siberia”

Posted on March 23, 2025 by Roger Moore

A village pastor finds himself guarding a possibly valuable meteorite, fighting off those who covet it and questioning his faith and his wife — who is pregnant with a baby he’s sure isn’t his — in the dark and daft … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Body Builder is on the Spectrum, Steroided Up and Dangerously Obsessed with his “Magazine Dreams”

Posted on March 22, 2025 by Roger Moore

Labeling Jonathan Majors‘s turn in “Magazine Dreams” “deeply disturbing” is the epitome of understatement. He plays a body builder whose on-the-spectrum awkwardness and his obsession with building his body and competing with it, an obsession augmented with mood-altering steroids, puts … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Can “The Ugly Stepsister” make that Glass Slipper fit?

Posted on March 21, 2025 by Roger Moore

Yes, let’s have a “Cinderella” without the spin. Pound home the “princess” as beauty bias messaging with body horror driven by body dysphoria. And make it splatter film bloody, sexually explicit and occasionally funny — laughs with a grimace of … Continue reading →

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