Reviews Sharp-eyed readers will likely note the absence of a review of Widows, Steve McQueen’s heist movie, which also appears, from this distance, to be something of a feminist call to arms. I say “appears” because the vagaries of real life prevented me from seeing the thing in time for my holiday-accelerated deadline. I’ll write […]
Fortuna Theatre
Posted inArts + Scene
An Unexpected Crime Thriller
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 in the 1960s and made it to the New York Times bestseller list. It’s a squalid little gem of a film, it’s a tale of […]
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The Boys and the Band
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 Davies and Felix van Groeningen, who adapted those memoirs into a screenplay that the latter went on to direct. The end result of all that, […]
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Awkward
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 actor to take the part. An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn, which recently had a two-screening weekend at the Minor Theatre and is available on […]
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Sharper than Ever
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 unto itself. Starting with Dark Star (1976), Carpenter has been steadily building a catalog of hugely entertaining, weirdly stylish homages to/syntheses of classic monster movies, space […]
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First Man Misses its Moonshot
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 growing filmography to reflect it. Now he works almost exclusively on major releases for prestige directors but he brings intense focus and emotional depth to […]
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Venom Has Teeth
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 with this one. I’m prone to root for the underdog and, even when that dog isn’t exactly under anything (see Deadpool 2), a lower profile […]
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Long Nights
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 working his way through thankless club dates and TV development deals that went nowhere, until he became the sort of entertainer who holds arenas in […]
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No Filter
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 freedoms we’d have define us, it can be difficult to identify new developments to be thankful for. There is hope at the national level, I […]
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Stylish Monsters
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 a gorgeous, antiseptic ultra-modern house. That’s only a little less than half of it though, the veneer of the part of the story dominated by […]
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Peppermint’s Not So Fresh
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 hours. But for every Atomic Blonde (2017) there must of course be a Peppermint and the pattern of hope despoiled continues. I cite Atomic Blonde […]
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Flesh and Fury
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 Sauvaire’s 2017 drama, written by Jonathan Hirschbein and Nick Saltrese, and starring Joe Cole, is based on a memoir by Billy Moore, a Liverpudlian boxer […]