Blog Archives

Here’s a modernish IRA-set spin on “Notorious,” with Clive Owen as the British agent turning and using Andrea Riseborough, an Irish woman racked by guilt and fury over the baby brother killed by a British bullet decades before. Riseborough is … Continue reading →

I love pop music and folk music history, reading up or watching docs on that whole Greenwich Village scene @1960, when Joan and Bob were there, and Jim McGuinn wisely changed his name to Roger McGuinn. I’d pay good money … Continue reading →

Meryl and Julia. And Chris Cooper. Three Oscar winners. And Ewan M. and Abigail Breslin and Juliette Lewis and Sam Shepard and Margo Martindale and was that Benedict Cumberbatch? A family gathered for a funeral in August, in rural Osage … Continue reading →

A dazzling, gripping and possibly moving disaster-in-space picture. We haven’t seen one of those in ages, Look for “Gravity” this Christmas.

This thriller about a security guy whose records, files, whose very existence has been expunged from the digital and real world in this thriller, opening next week. And since “Expunged” would be an awkward title, they went with “Erased.”

The casting of this heist picture is on the nose, as they say. Jesse Eisenberg can do that “smartest guy in the room” thing in his sleep. Morgan Freeman twinkles, and Michael CAine fumes and Mark Ruffalo ponders and Isla … Continue reading →

It seems too soft, too sweet, too coming-of-age. Light on the “McLovin,” if you follow. But “The Kings of Summer” seems to wear its heart on its teenage boy’s sleeve. Pals sneak off into the woods to build a cabin … Continue reading →

Lee “Precious” Daniels rounded up Oscar winners, and Oprah, to bring his version of the life of a White House butler who had a front row seat to the great swing in America’s racial history. Forest Whitaker has the title … Continue reading →

Leonard Nimoy, shaggy and disheveled, singing that damned Bilbo Baggins tune from his awful 1960s music career. And stuck with a golf-unfriendly Mercedes. Which makes him swear. Zachary Quinto zipping along in an Audi, Warp Factor 2. VERY funny spot, … Continue reading →

A brief, brilliant novel becomes a big, 2:23 movie in the hands of Baz “Moulin Rouge” Luhrmann. High hopes for this one, and not just for the stellar cast. Baz could use a hit, and this feels very “Rouge.” “Gatsby” … Continue reading →