Tag Archives: movies

Netflixable? A Norwegian remake follows a drunken, aimless skier on “The Wrong Track”

One of the more disillusioning aspects of the Golden Age of Content is the way Netflix repurposes intellectual property and remakes films for different markets. Spanish films get almost pointless Mexican or Argentine remakes, and vice versa. And it all … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Cute and sweet and challenging — REALLY challenging — “The Unbreakable Boy”

In the years since Hollywood “discovered” autism, the tendency has been for movies to treat those carrying this burden as more “Rain Man” quirky and cute than “Rain Man” challenging. Symptoms and behaviors might come and go as the plot … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Divers race to save One of Their Own from Taking his “Last Breath”

Fear of the inky black void at the bottom of the sea and of drowning down there drives the simple but flawlessly executed diver-down thriller “Last Breath.” It’s an almost-real-time account of a deep sea diving accident, and a film … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: A Young Hitman is tested by “Old Guy” Christoph Waltz, his Mentor

Hitman thrillers long ago ran out of anything new to do with the genre, lapsing into glib sometime after “La Femme Nikita” back in the ’90s. Nowadays, “glib” isn’t enough. If you’re not aiming for “flippant” like 1974’s “Thunderbolt and … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: An Oscar-nominated animated “Incredible Journey” from Latvia — “Flow”

“Flow” is a futuristic Franco-Latvian fantasy, an animated sci-fi version of Disney’s classic animal odyssey, “The Incredible Journey.” Gints Zilbalodis’ film, an Oscar nominee as Best Animated Feature and as Best International Feature, is a dialogue-free travelogue that follows a … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Home Invaders show up with an Agenda — “Everyone Is Going to Die”

“Everyone is Going to Die” is a generic home invasion thriller that clumsily struggles with the #MeToo “message” grafted onto it. It opens with the usual “Funny Games/’The ‘Strangers’ franchise” franchise attack, serves up hints that this assault isn’t as … Continue reading →

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Netflixable? Wedding Mayhem comes to a Swedish Couple promising to “Love Forever”

“Love Forever” is an overpopulated Swedish wedding farce that offers more possibilities than payoffs. Writer-director Staffan Lindberg throws in lots of tropes and “types” and reaches for plenty of low-hanging fruit in this comedy about city Swedes shoehorned into a … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Stephen King commits (Amusing-ish) Murder via a Wind-Up Toy — “The Monkey”

The blood and guts of “The Monkey” is played for laughs in Osgood Perkins’ film of Stephen King’s monstrous wind-up toy thriller. It’s a heavy-handed, staggering splatter comedy with random laughs mixed with random slaughter, all of it cast and … Continue reading →

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Classic Film Review: Jeremy Irons leads a Polish Home Renovation in 1980s London — “Moonlighting” (1982)

A cut-rate Polish work crew slips into wintry 1981 London to do an off-the-books home renovation in “Moonlighting,” Jerzy Skolimowski’s droll and intimate comment on capitalism, the collapse of communism and the horrors of cut-rate home repair. It’s one of … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: The terror and heartbreak of life under a dictatorship — the Oscar-contending “I’m Still Here”

A mother and father contemplate sending their oldest daughter to London to study. It’s 1970 and the family lives in Rio de Janeiro. Brazil has been under a military dictatorship for years. the daughter is college age, rebellious, and the … Continue reading →

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