13-year old Theo Decker (Oakes Fegley) and his mother Audrey (Hailey Wist) are visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art when a terrorist bomb explodes. The explosion leaves his mother dead. Surrounded by debris and dead bodies, Theo does two things that will have long term ramifications. He comforts a dying old man who gives him …
When we first meet her, Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) is a shy spinster, living in her family’s stately Boston mansion under the tyrannical thumb of her elderly mother (Gladys Cooper). Charlotte was a late child whom her mother admits was the unwanted child; the ugly duckling who exists only to serve her mother’s every whim. …
Blu-ray Review: Now, Voyager (Criterion Collection) Read More »
Every year we get a few movies (sometimes, more than a few), that fail to live up to expectations, despite wonderful origins. The cast and director are well known and respected by the public, but the material just fails to connect with viewers. Such is the case with Where’d You Go, Bernadette. Based on Maria …
Winter Kills William Richert’s adaptation of Richard Condon’s novel “Winter Kills”–a thinly veiled look at the John F. Kennedy assassination–grounded in dark political satire was plagued with production issues including a mafia hit on one producer, a forty-year prison sentence handed down to another, production was halted several times. When the film was finally released, …
Gurinder Chadha, director of Bend it Like Beckham, delivers another lively character study with Blinded By the Light, a period piece set in England,1987. 16-year-old Pakistani immigrant Javed (Viveik Kalra) lives in the industrial town of Luton with his parents, Malik (Kulvinder Ghir) and Noor (Meera Ganatra). A factory worker for years, Malik now finds …
Chuck Lorre, the man behind such hit sitcoms as The Big Bang Theory, Mom, and Two and a Half Men takes on aging in his latest sitcom, The Kominsky Method. “We are passengers on boats slowly sinking,” Sandy Kominsky (Michael Douglas, Wall Street) says. A legendary acting coach in Hollywood, he was once a successful …
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Based on the novel The Looters, by John Reese, Charley Varrick was directed by Don Siegel from a script by Howard Rodman. Walter Matthau stars in the title role; a former trick pilot and crop duster, Charley is reduced to robbing banks with his wife Nadine (Jacqueline Scott), and his young, hot-headed partner, Harman Sullivan …
Released in 1928, The Circus marked the final appearance of the Little Tramp during the silent. era. 1928 was a time of transition for the motion picture industry. It would be the only year where silent movies and talkies were produced in roughly the same number. By 1929, most films had dialogue. Chaplin would make …
Blu-ray Review: The Circus (The Criterion Collection) Read More »
As I’ve asserted before, I’ve never been much of a horror fan. Sure, I’ve watched countless films in the genre through the years, but few make a lasting impression. An American Werewolf In London is one of the few exceptions. Released in 1981, the story is as much a tragicomedy as it is a horror …
New York City, 1978. Three women are the best of friends and married to gangsters. Cathy (Melissa McCarthy (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) is a stay at home mother; Ruby (Tiffany Haddish) has a racist mother-in-law (Margo Martindale); and Claire (Elisabeth Moss) is regularly beaten by her bully of a husband. When their spouses are …
