As a longtime scholar of Jane Austen’s fiction and a self-professed snob about films derived from it, the biggest compliment I can pay to Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is… Continue reading "Jane Austen Wrecked My Life (Piani, 2025)"
Nearly everything I can think to say about Final Reckoning sounds like (and is) a criticism, so I guess I should be honest that I thought the film superbly executed… Continue reading "Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning"
On paper — at the pitch level — Another Simple Favor sounds like a no-brainer. Seven years out from a film that reportedly grossed 100M on a budget of 20,… Continue reading "Another Simple Favor (Feig, 2025)"
At the end of a series of interviews on the DVD for Doubt, writer/director John Patrick Shanley explains what he was trying to do in his play and its film… Continue reading "Doubt (Shanley, 2008)"
Given that Hello Beautiful‘s sole reason for being seems to be to induce sympathy for a woman with breast cancer, saying that it attempts to do absolutely nothing else feels… Continue reading "Hello Beautiful (Hamzeh, 2025)"
If one grows up watching a lot of television or going to the movies, one develops positive associations with any number of actors or actresses who participated in beloved projects.… Continue reading "Relative Control (Yachin, 2025)"
Good Bad Things is a winsome indie romance from Music Box about a guy with Muscular Dystrophy who finds the woman of his dreams (of all our dreams really) on… Continue reading "Good Bad Things (Stanger, 2024)"
Kim A. Snyder’s Newtown was one of my favorite films of 2016, so I walked into The Librarians with understandably high expectations. As with Snyder’s gut-punching portrait of Sandy Hook… Continue reading "The Librarians (Snyder, 2025)"
Speak is this year’s feel-good film at Full Frame, and it comes with all the feels one wants and needs from a festival crowd-pleaser. I have mentioned elsewhere that film… Continue reading "Speak (Tiexiera and Mossman, 2025)"
Blue Road is a sad film, at times angry but never bitter. The title originates from a line in one of O’Brien’s early books that her husband insisted was wrong… Continue reading "Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story (O’Shea, 2024)"
