As we publish this, the 20th annual Phoenix Film Festival has donned its topcoat for the gents and the very best of evening gowns for the ladies as it starts its 11-day run. Nothing about this year’s festival is normal, though. Delayed by nine months, owing to the novel Coronavirus that has affected so many [...]
As the credits rolled on “The War with Grandpa,” I couldn’t help but smile. I enjoyed the antics between Robert De Niro, who plays Ed, and his grandson, Peter (Oakes Fegley). The antics rival "Home Alone" in their physicality, and the film is probably something that Disney would have made in the 1990s. That wasn’t [...]
My lips pursed with glee as Sofia Coppola’s gorgeous “On the Rocks” spooled out. My glee wasn’t over the fact that the film laments relationships that are on the fritz, nor that we've forgotten how to communicate with one another. Nor did they raise over Laura’s (Rashida Jones) blind insistence that nothing was wrong with [...]
"We the People of the United States . . ." Powerful words open the preamble to the Constitution of the United States. Meaningless in our current environment. It's easy to sit here and armchair-quarterback how our duly elected representatives work to represent their constituents when words like "voter suppression" permeate the airwaves of cable news [...]
There is something to be said for people who stick their necks out for romance. Even if it's just a one night fling (which doesn't constitute romance), the passion that goes into mating rituals is quite involved. "It's Complicated," therefore, might be an apt way to describe the kitschy romance that evolves in Natalie Krinsky's [...]
Even in the deepest of poverty, Armando Iannucci ("The Death of Stalin") manages to find a smile. No, that's not quite right. Yes, there is a smile. It's more of a feeling of joy as the lips curl, remembering a dream of what was, content in a world so full of wrong, that we get [...]
2020 will go down in history as perhaps one of our most divisive years in history. At the heart of our way of life through and beyond the Pandemic is our political system, an intrigue of epic proportions such that no one can effectively make a decision or lead us through the ills that affect [...]
In this era of reality, competitive television making stars out of talented unknowns, it is a curiosity why a film about the rise or fall of a musical star would be a hot commodity. And yet, Nisha Ganatra's "The High Note" strikes the right chord between two generations as one star misses her beats, and [...]
As I reflect on Kelly Reichardt’s “First Cow,” which opens in select theaters this weekend, I can’t help but smile on my “first Reichardt” experience, “Certain Women” and the audience reaction to that film. It is important to set the stage for this experience in that I was not a member of the press, so [...]
Historically significant films have a way of entering our respective spheres of influence, notably because they either keep historical perspective in context, or they embellish the truth for a fictionalized accounting, elevated for dramatic purposes. “The Banker,” which opens in limited release this weekend and debuts on Apple TV+ on March 20th, is a good [...]
