Ever since Scream 2 opened with the premiere of the movie-within-the-movie Stab, based on the events of the previous installment, the horror franchise has been built around references to itself. The original Scream, released in 1996, is a clever deconstruction of slasher-movie conventions that’s also a masterfully effective slasher movie on its own, thanks to the […]
The Kindred
The Kindred starts by putting viewers right into the action. A woman runs frantically out of an apartment building. She continuously glances behind her as if she’s being chased. Just as she makes it outside, a body drops to the ground in front of her. She backs away into the street in horror as she […]
Courageous Warriors: Beauty From the Ashes
The bad news came quickly. It was breast cancer. It was Stage 4. And, the doctors told her, she was not a candidate for radiation, or chemotherapy. So what can you do, the woman asked. “They told me they could keep me ‘comfortable,’” she remembers. That patient survived breast cancer, though, as did all the […]
Killing the Shepherd
If you want to save a species from extinction, kill it. That’s the counterintuitive, but intriguing, idea behind the documentary Killing the Shepherd. Set in an impoverished section of Africa, it first lays out two real-life, and truly disastrous scenarios about our vanishing wildlife. In the first, there are no rules or regulations on big-game […]
Inheritance, Italian Style
The Parlazzis would like to invite you to a big family dinner. Hope you like resentment. It’s the main course – and getting served up with sides of greed, anger, lust and depression. That’s the set up to the comic melodrama Inheritance, Italian Style which reunites a big, squabbling clan of Sicilians to divvy up […]
American Insurrection
When fascism was on the rise in ’30s Europe, Sinclair Lewis wrote a novel about a dystopian, dictatorial America, sarcastically titled It Can’t Happen Here. In American Insurrection, it already has. That title, a new one, is misleading, although commercial. (The movie was originally called The Volunteers.) Before the film even begins, an election has […]
The Top 10 Movies of 2021
2021 was The Year that New Movies Were Everywhere. Back in theaters. Premiering on Netflix. Streaming on HBO Max, a notable evolution that synced at-home WB releases with theatrical showings for 30 days. The moviegoing experience used to involve picking a movie and a moviehouse in which to see it (and snack selections, of course). […]
The King’s Man
Love them or hate them, the first two Kingsman movies, Kingsman: The Secret Service and Kingsman: The Golden Circle, reveled in a giddy, stylized brand of hyperviolence that made them stand out from more traditional spy films. However, the third entry in the franchise, The King’s Man, lacks its predecessors’ sense of irreverent fun. Part […]
The Tender Bar
The Tender Bar is a structural, tonal mess – but a damn likable one. George Clooney, directing his seventh film, leaves a sloppy trail of memories and moments in the life of writer J.R. Moehringer, who we see as a kid growing up fast on Long Island, and then as a hopeful journalist figuring out […]
Spider-Man: No Way Home
Several years ago, when it was announced that Spider-Man would be incorporated into the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s ever-expanding franchise of superheroes, it was the third time in recent memory that a new live-action version of the wall-crawler was bound for the big screen. Given the circumstances, fans could be forgiven for feeling some Spidey fatigue. […]
Nightmare Alley
Director Guillermo Del Toro is known for building dark fantasy worlds in films like The Shape of Water and Pan’s Labyrinth. His latest, Nightmare Alley, takes him to a place he’s never gone before, a story based entirely in reality. That this is a reality in which characters take advantage of the tendency of suckers […]
Vietnam: Fast Forward
What’s the first word that comes to mind when you think of Vietnam? The Vietnamese themselves know what it is. “War.” And around the world, especially in the West, the dominant images people have of Vietnam are of bombing raids, smoldering villages and, perhaps, helicopters departing an evacuated U.S. Embassy. The documentary Vietnam: Fast Forward, […]
The Hand of God
While lying awake one night in the bedroom they share, Fabietto faces a question from older brother, Marchino: Would he rather have sex with their gorgeous, flirtatious Aunt Patrizia or have soccer legend Diego Maradona play for their hometown team. Ah, a conundrum made for a teenager. What else would a young man in 1980s […]
Single Mother by Choice
So how did you spend the pandemic? Did you launch a new side-hustle? Explore a new hobby? Bake an awful lot of bread? Selina Ringel had a baby, and co-wrote and starred in a movie. And did it all at once. Single Mother by Choice is the appealing, and impressive result. Directed and co-written by […]
Drive My Car
In some of the most effective storytelling, there is precision. Not just in the details, dialogue, and settings, but also in how a tale is told. In Drive My Car, celebrated filmmaker Ryûsuke Hamaguchi emphasizes the “how”, creating an elegant, reflective movie that moves beyond plot and conversation to examine – and enjoy – the […]
Outlier
“I’m only doing this for your own good.” Most of us first hear, and learn to distrust, those words as children. This is for my own good? Eating liver, sitting through Sunday school, going to this crummy sleepaway camp? No thanks. The line can be infuriating coming from a parent. It’s terrifying coming from a […]
Lotawana
Forrest has gone adrift – literally. Unsure of where he’s heading in life, he’s decided to head nowhere. Retreating to a small sailboat on a big Missouri lake, he meanders, living off his small savings and whatever catfish he can catch. And then he meets a pretty young woman, Everly. And things take a new, […]
Look Away, Look Away
Ah, sleepy, magnolia-scented Dixie. You know, old times there are not forgotten. And maybe that’s the problem. Patrick O’Connor’s documentary Look Away, Look Away takes a cold, clear-eyed look at the Deep South, race relations and cultural warfare. And keeps its focus by narrowing it down to one issue, the Confederate flag, and one place: […]
Implanted
Imagine that little voice from Google Maps lives inside your head. Except, instead of telling you when to turn left, it tells you everything. Go to sleep, Wake up. Eat lunch. Kill that man. Wait, what? That’s the idea behind Implanted, a smart movie from director Fabien Dufils that deftly mixes plausible science-fiction with Bourne […]
Hell or High Seas
Just because you’re out of uniform doesn’t mean you’re out of danger. The sad truth about our men and women in the armed services is that they’re more likely to die at home from suicide than on the battlefield from enemy fire. Every day, more than 20 veterans take their own lives. And that doesn’t […]