Reviews FORD VS. FERRARI. Motorsport in the middle 1960s stood on the precipice of change: still hewing to its daredevil origins, it remained delicate and brutal, homebuilt and homicidal. It was a time when a little upstart car company off the beach of Los Angeles, helmed by a former world-class racing driver turned failed chicken […]
Broadway Cinema
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Doctor Sleep’s Diminishing Returns
Reviews DOCTOR SLEEP. Stephen King famously hates Stanley Kubrick’s version of his novel The Shining (book 1977, movie 1980). It’s not my place to say he’s wrong but … he is. While Kubrick’s is a liberal adaptation, therein lies the whole damn point. Books are not movies, nor the reverse, and this business of simply […]
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All Hail
Reviews DOLEMITE IS MY NAME. To fans who identify Eddie Murphy by his early movies — 48 Hrs. (1982), Trading Places (1983), Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and Coming To America (1988) — and/or his legendary if, in hindsight, occasionally lamentable stand-up specials Delirious (1983) and Raw (1987), and his run on Saturday Night Live (1980-84), […]
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Surrounded by Monsters
Reviews ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP. I liked Zombieland (2009) well enough: Its clever, comic tone, distinctive characters, strong performances and self-assured but restrained visual style made it stand out. Enough so that I came away hoping director Ruben Fleisher might be at the vanguard of some burgeoning action-comedy movement. Not so, as it turns out. And, […]
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Meeting Your Connection
Reviews JEXI. Writers have been trying to get a handle on the notion of artificial intelligence — giving it an assortment of names, down the decades — for, oh, the better part of two centuries now. (I think it’s fair to include Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as a very early example and I don’t care to […]
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Joker‘s House of Mirrors
JOKER. I am aware of the ex post facto politicization of Joker but I have not — will not — wade into that swamp. All art is a product of its time and place, of course, and this is a dark movie borne of dark times. To ascribe intent, though, to allow context to subsume […]
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Through the Eyesof Native Activists
I started my review of From Wounded Knee to Standing Rock: A reporter’s journey, screening at the Eureka Theater on Oct. 19, with some trepidation because of its local connection. Journalist and director Kevin McKiernan’s documentary looks at Indian actions at two different points in history. It focuses partly on the American Indian Movement, the […]
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Confessions of a Movie Nerd
My editor informs me this week’s issue will be focused on media literacy. I don’t believe I could be accused of possessing said literacy and, as a writer of movie reviews for print media, could more aptly be called obsolete or deaf to the mewl and clamor of contemporary culture — perhaps a relic. But […]
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Ad Astra‘s Thoughtful Action
Review AD ASTRA. Back in the dark and distant past, when the word “independent” was first buzzily attached to American cinema on a widespread basis, there was a whole cable channel dedicated to it. IFC still exists, or so I am told, but in that creaky, bygone era, such upstarts had little to no budget […]
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Respect the Hustle
Review HUSTLERS is not a perfect movie. Of course not, such a thing does not exist. But it is a timely, important and overall very good one, and for that I guess I wish it could hit all the invisible, impossible marks required for greatness. Maybe I should be satisfied that it has managed significant […]
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The Sucker’s Club
Review IT CHAPTER TWO. When I realized I would have to wait two years between It and It Chapter Two, I was disappointed. The first movie, released in 2017, was tone-perfect in how it portrayed the first half of Stephen King’s lengthy novel about childhood friends battling a supernatural clown for the soul of their […]
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The Champ
Review PEANUT BUTTER FALCON. What I tend to think of as healthy skepticism is probably more likely pathological or diagnosable on some sort of spectrum — not particularly healthy, if I’m being honest. And even after a delightful summer of traveling and the passing of time (seeing remarkably few movies, actually), I felt compelled to […]