(November 15, 2018)
Reviews CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? is based on the autobiography by Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy), a real-life biographer who began writing magazine profiles for the likes of Katharine Hepburn...
(November 8, 2018)
Reviews BEAUTIFUL BOY. The truism that addiction is no laughing matter is apparently and unfortunately not lost on concurrent father and son memoirists David and Nic Sheff, nor on Luke...
(November 1, 2018)
Reviews AN EVENING WITH BEVERLY LUFF LINN. Some screenwriters write a script for a specific actor. Wes Anderson famously wrote Royal Tenenbaum for Gene Hackman and had to cajole the...
(October 25, 2018)
Previews HALLOWEEN. John Carpenter remains one of the largely unsung heroes of 20th century American popular cinema, whose work is more influential than widely discussed and almost a genre...
(October 18, 2018)
Previews FIRST MAN. "Hey Girl" memes and references to The Notebook (2004) aside, Ryan Gosling has become one of the most versatile, self-challenging leading men in Hollywood, with a constantly...
(October 11, 2018)
Reviews VENOM. As much as I am loath to describe and discuss yet another Marvel movie (where are the emojis on this thing?), I admit a sense of morbid curiosity...
(October 4, 2018)
Reviews NIGHT SCHOOL. Kevin Hart, like his frequent costar Dwayne Johnson, lives by hustle. One of the biggest stand-up comics in the world, he came by it honestly, after decades...
(September 27, 2018)
ASSASSINATION NATION. This far into our waking national nightmare, when hours seem like days and each sunrise reveals more desperate attempts to hamper or undo the personal, social and legal...
(September 20, 2018)
Reviews A SIMPLE FAVOR. The thing here is style: a modern noir about a missing person, a psycho-sexual thriller soaked in gin and dressed in devastating clothes, played out in...
(September 13, 2018)
PEPPERMINT. Due to the recent and ongoing action movie renaissance, there is in every new shoot 'em up the hopeful possibility of transcendence, or at least a couple of entertaining...
(September 6, 2018)
A PRAYER BEFORE DAWN. I left A Prayer Before Dawn feeling like I'd been beaten to a pulp in a Thai prison, but I mean that as a compliment. Jean-Stéphane...
(August 30, 2018)
THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS. So they've got this this LA detective noir filled with violence and drugs and sex, enacted by puppets — Henson puppets, no less! — and Melissa McCarthy?...
(August 23, 2018)
CRAZY RICH ASIANS. Director Jon M. Chu's adaptation of Kevin Kwan's bestseller is already a big deal in that it's the first all-Asian cast from a major Hollywood studio since...
(August 16, 2018)
Reviews BLACKKKLANSMAN. I've never subscribed to the notion that hatred is borne of fear. There's truth to it, I suppose, but it has always seemed to me an attempted defense...
(August 9, 2018)
THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS. There are stories, obscured by the complacency and subterfuge of modern life, that retain the power to surprise and amaze. Some, through exploration, become chilling reminders of...
(August 2, 2018)
Reviews MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT. Whether or not we need more missions impossible remains the subject of debate. Despite the retention of stars Tom Cruise and Ving Rhames, and the...
