Film Reviews

PG-13 | 1h 50min | Action, Comedy, Crime | 8 June 2018 (USA) Hollywood recycles, composts, and grows new story-gardens. It retrofits, jury-rigs, jerry-builds, and cobbles. Take the “Ocean’s” franchise: exit the dudes, bring on the ladies. What do we get? An exchange of the bad-boy nouveaux Rat Pack for bad-girl high fashion. Is it […]

PG-13 | 1h 37min | Drama, Music | 8 June 2018 (USA) One of life’s most confusing situations for young people is figuring out that one’s dominant talent in life might not be the deciding factor in finding one’s life’s work. As they say, vocation is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s […]

PG | 1h 58min | Animation, Action, Adventure | 15 June 2018 (USA) “The Incredibles” has always been the rootin’-tootin’-est and most engaging of all the superhero franchises. The original “Incredibles” debuted 14 years ago, predating Marvel’s “Iron Man” by four years. It’s top-shelf largely because Disney’s Pixar, at this point, is pretty much synonymous […]

PG-13 | 1h 34min | Documentary, Biography | 8 June 2018 (USA) “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” in my day, was the butt of many jokes. When I got to college in 1978, there was a “National Lampoon” comedy bit circulating in the dorms that had Mr. Rogers as a child molester, with parents trying to sign […]

PG-13 | Comedy | 18 May 2018 (USA) “Rage against the dying of the light,” said poet Dylan Thomas. An understandable sentiment, to be sure. But I wonder if he’d take that to include meaning, say, that elderly ladies should read “Fifty Shades of Grey” and get exceedingly hot and bothered by S&M soft porn? […]

PG-13 | 2h 15min | Action, Adventure, Fantasy | 25 May 2018 (USA) When Lucasfilm was casting the iconic role of Han Solo from “Star Wars,” you’d think they’d want to do a bang-up job of it. But no—a complete whiff—the new kid (Alden Ehrenreich) ain’t got it. Whatsoever. Chalk it up to America’s having […]

PG-13 | 1h 28min | Thriller | 11 May 2018 (USA) A wealthy black man goes for a jog. We know he’s wealthy because of his lengthy selection of the perfect watch to go for a jog with. He eventually gets slammed by a car, and while that’s sad, the jog (and watch selection) was […]

In strategic terms, it is not so advantageous to have the front line on your national soil. At least for French soldiers during World War I, it provided opportunities to return home on furloughs. However, it is decidedly a mixed blessing when they also bring home their post-traumatic stress and find gossip waiting for them. […]

R | 1h 36min | Comedy, Drama | 4 May 2018 (USA) I categorically don’t cover the horror genre. Horror movies are like toxic, chemical-plant runoff, emptying into the river of human culture. However, at the screening of “Tully,” it dawned on me there was a particular horror movie I’d never conceived of. A genre […]

There have been a number of reports of Chinese elementary and middle school students who have been sexually assaulted by teachers and Communist Party officials, but the infamous Hainan rape case is the most obvious analog for this based-on-a-true-story film. When two young girls are assaulted by a local regime official, the police immediately circle the wagons—protecting […]

PG-13 | 2h 29min | Action, Adventure, Fantasy | 27 April 2018 (USA) When discussing the “Avengers” franchise, you have to separate audiences into two groups: millennials and everybody else. Millennials grew up on comic books. Meanwhile, books like “Dumbing Down: Essays on the Strip-Mining of American Culture” by Katharine Washburn have taken note of […]

1h 25min | Comedy, Drama | 20 April 2018 (USA) The titular house in “The House of Tomorrow” is a geodesic dome; the type made famous by utopian futurist Buckminster Fuller in the 1960s. Domes are usually associated with Woodstock and hippie communes. However, Fuller was not a hippie whatsoever, but a ferocious intellect who […]

PG-13 | 1h 31min | Drama, Romance | 23 March 2018 (USA) “Dying-Girl Romance” is what I call the genre. Without having to think too much about it, you know exactly whereof I speak, thanks to Nicholas Sparks’s movies. I was ready to slam this one, but then I had to admit to myself that […]

The documented true story of the 102nd Infantry Regiment’s mascot comes to animated life in Richard Lanni’s “Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero."

The short life of Chinese novelist-turned-filmmaker Hu Bo recalls that of the late Marcin Wrona, except it is even more tragic. Both killed themselves before receiving the international accolades bestowed on their final films. In the case of Hu, it was also his first (finished under the supervision of his parents and a sponsoring arts group), […]

NEW YORK—Wine experts love to talk about how important terroir (the combination of land and environmental factors) is for Burgundy wines. That makes it very labor and resource intensive. A prodigal son is only back a few days when his estranged siblings put him to work overseeing the harvest. It is no vacation, but it […]

R | 1h 51min | Action, Comedy, Crime | 9 March 2018 (USA) The best actors do comedy and drama equally well. At the extremes, there are Daniel Day-Lewis and Jim Carrey. Of course, you can’t say three-Oscar Day-Lewis isn’t a “best” actor; the comedic things he does in “My Left Foot” are the height […]

The Canadian premiere of the film “Badass Beauty Queen” will be on March 8, 2018, on International Women’s Day, in Toronto. More info about the screening can be found here.  Anastasia Lin is not your typical beauty queen. She has the requisite looks and resume for the job but also a depth of conviction rare […]

Michael: “I, Tonya” is based on the true story of Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie). Tonya Harding became famous in my childhood when someone attacked her competitor, figure skater Nancy Kerrigan, before they were set to compete against each other at the U.S. national competition and the 1994 Olympics. Tonya’s husband and his friend arranged the […]

PARK CITY, Utah—Jack London’s bestselling animal adventure novel has been adapted as Japanese anime, a 1970s Italian franchise starring Franco Nero, a Disney live-action movie, a 1926 Hollywood silent featuring Strongheart the Dog, and a 1946 Soviet version Red Jack probably would have liked best. Clearly, the story’s popularity has never flagged, but the most […]

PARK CITY, Utah—Maria Yudina was such a brilliant classical pianist, she survived the Great Terror, even though she made no secret of her Orthodox faith and her contempt for Stalin’s brutal regime. According to a story mostly considered apocryphal, she was dragged back for a repeat concert performance, with full orchestra, after Stalin requested (demanded) […]

“Dead Pigs” is like the novel of today’s China Tom Wolfe has yet to write: bitingly satirical, trenchantly observant, with characters from the entire social gamut.

Even prior to the Ming Dynastic Era, Huzhou was known as a center of the silk trade and for the production of ink brushes. Somewhat logically, it is now a regional hub of the Chinese textile industry, but that does not necessarily make it a fun place to live and work—quite the contrary, in fact. […]

During the National Socialist occupation of France, Django Reinhardt’s “Nuages” became an unofficial anthem of the resistance. It doesn’t at all sound fiery, but its swinging sophistication gave people hope. It was yet another reason for the Germans to dislike Reinhardt, who already had two conspicuous strikes against him, as a Romany jazz musician, but […]

Is it even possible that the major networks and newspapers reporting on a national news story could be considered superficial, and Heaven forbid, perhaps a tad biased? Take for instance the case of the world’s most notorious figure skater. Tonya Harding had the misfortune of living through a scandal that broke just as the TV […]

R | 1h 55min | Comedy, Crime, Drama | 10 November 2017 (USA) Mildred Hayes’s teenage daughter Angela was raped/murdered seven months prior to when the story starts, and mom (Frances McDormand) is ravenous for justice. That’s “Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri.” What a strange movie title. Well, it’s a strange, demented, often hilarious, […]

Some will ask in partially good faith whether we really need another Holocaust documentary. Oddly enough, those same people never seem to ask if we really need another film about the environment. There have been a fair number released after Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List” and Claude Lanzmann’s “Shoah.” Many of them were excellent, such as “Inside Hana’s Suitcase,” […]