The Croods: A New Age unfolds like an American football game where a perennial 5-11 team (I’m looking at you, Washington) grabs a first quarter lead. For a short while,… Continue reading "The Croods: A New Age (Crawford, 2020)"
Alex Gibney is the rare documentarian who usually ends up convincing me regardless of whether or not I start on the same side of his arguments. Taxi to the Dark… Continue reading "Crazy, Not Insane (Gibney, 2020)"
Like its protagonists, Han Van Meegeren and Joseph Piller, The Last Vermeer is unassuming. Its subject — the looting of European art by the Nazis — was covered more dramatically… Continue reading "The Last Vermeer (Friedkin, 2020)"
Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on The Exorcist is an engaging and interesting film even if you are not a horror aficionado. I’m not a horror fan, but The Exorcist… Continue reading "Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on The Exorcist (Phillipe, 2019)"
It is admittedly difficult these days to separate the pleasure of having any new movie to watch from the pleasures induced by a particular film. That caveat aside, I could… Continue reading "Nomadland (Zhao, 2020)"
Nearly a quarter of a century ago, a little girl named JonBenét Ramsey was murdered . Like so many other idle observers, I immediately assumed one or more members of… Continue reading "The State of Texas vs. Melissa"
When I first heard that Jack London’s political novel Martin Eden was being made as a film set in modern-day Naples, I wasn’t sure how well the book’s themes would… Continue reading "Martin Eden (Marcello, 2019)"
Is it possible for a film to be simultaneously mediocre (bordering on bad) and essential? Native Son has a lot of stuff wrong with it as a film. Wright was… Continue reading "Native Son (Chenal, 1951)"
My go-to television contrarian take for the last decade or so has been an insistence that Stana Katic more or less kept a mediocre show called Castle afloat while her… Continue reading "A Call to Spy (Pilcher, 2019)"
Summerland Made In Italy Tesla Measure for Measure Creating a Character: The Moni Yakim Legacy
