Tag Archives: Reviews

Movie Review: Zombie Apocalypse is the least of This Cali Hamlet’s problems — “Hemet, or the Landlady Don’t Drink Tea”

Posted on January 15, 2025 by Roger Moore

The line between a “Z-movie,” a “zero stars” on the one-to-four-star scale, and a very bad one-star C or B movie usually comes down to intent. Did they set out to make a film this awful? Was their motivation or … Continue reading →

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Series Review: Tom Wolfe’s “A Man in Full” becomes an Oversexed Cracker Cartoon for Netflix

Posted on January 7, 2025 by Roger Moore

Tom Wolfe’s darkly comic 1998 novel “A Man in Full” comes to the screen, courtesy of another king of ’80s and ’90s entertainment, TV writer/producer David E. Kelley. The book, uneven but page-turning trash encompassing Wolfe’s favorite themes — class, … Continue reading →

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Classic Film Review: Hopkins is “The Efficiency Expert,” but are Crowe, Collette and Mendelsohn getting the ax? (1991)

Posted on January 4, 2025 by Roger Moore

Three future stars from Down Under pop off the screen in “The Efficiency Expert,” a delicate, dated and yet timeless fish-out-of-water period piece set in Australia at the birth of the job-cutting “consultant” boom. Toni Collette, impressive and emotional in … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: A Locksmith lives to Regret Taking that One “Night Call”

Posted on January 4, 2025 by Roger Moore

I’m of two minds about that subgenre we call the hero/heroine with “particular skills” thriller. The parade of Liam Neeson/Jason Statham/John Cena et al action pictures where this mobster, that rogue government or rogue government agency or creepy neighbor crosses … Continue reading →

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Classic Film Review: A Scottish Bay, a Burt and a Baby-Faced Peter Capaldi — “Local Hero” (1983)

Posted on December 31, 2024 by Roger Moore

Oh to make the pilgrimage to Pennan, flying in to Aberdeen, recreating the journey a “Local Hero” makes in perhaps the quaintest, cutest film of that golden age of excess, the ’80s. Scottish writer-director Bill Forsyth’s “Gregory’s Girl” announced to … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Woman Boxer shows us “The Fire Inside”

Posted on December 25, 2024 by Roger Moore

A couple of great performances lift “The Fire Inside,” a generally conventional “fight picture” about a boxer long odds in pursuit of Olympic glory. The novelty to this compact genre drama from cinematographer turned director Rachel Morrison and Oscar winning … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Jackie Chan, in the silly present, in the fantastical past “A Legend”

Posted on December 22, 2024 by Roger Moore

Let the record reflect that Jackie Chan is more limber, nimble and in better faux fighting trim at 70 than you are at 60, 35 or 20, “Boomer,” “Xer,” Millennial or what have you. Hong Kong’s king of martial arts … Continue reading →

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Netflixable? Jolie as Callas, “Maria,” a Diva at Death’s Door

Posted on December 13, 2024 by Roger Moore

“Maria” is an operatic bio-pic in every sense of the word. In director Pablo Larraín’s vision of “La Callas,” the diva’s diva Maria Callas, there is tragedy off-stage but serenity in the spotlight, an artist wholly prepared and fully immersed … Continue reading →

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Classic Film Review: Carney, Tomlin, Killings and a Missing Cat — “The Late Show” (1977)

Posted on November 29, 2024 by Roger Moore

The golden age of film noir — cynical, sinister and shadowy thrillers about crime and the unchanging nature of human criminality — was the 1940s and ’50s, when black and white cinema still ruled. The genre never really went away, … Continue reading →

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BOX OFFICE: “Wicked” opens wicked fierce, “Gladiator II” clears $55

Posted on November 23, 2024 by Roger Moore

I joked on social media that I was catching a Thursday preview of “Wicked” with a cinema full of “high school theater kids.” There were certainly a lot more of them — chatting, endorsing the Arianda Grande ole’ time — … Continue reading →

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