I could spend a moment using Chloé Zhao’s third feature, “Nomadland,” to reflect on my childhood and the yearning I have as an adult to hit the open road. However, I am starting a new year, something the main character reflects on in the film, and I won’t use this review to spend time reflecting [...]
I could start this review out with a cliché that somehow connects this soulless reviewer with a discussion on Disney-Pixar’s “Soul,” premiering on Disney Plus Christmas Day. However, I am not soulless. I might be a sourpuss, but I am not soulless. “Soul” is the story of Joe Gardner, voiced by Jamie Foxx. Joe is [...]
Alright, I’ll admit it. I’m a sucker for the disaster genre of films that peppered the 1970’s. In fact, “The Towering Inferno” turned 46 years old on December 14. Why is this important to Ric Roman Waugh’s “Greenland,” which hits VOD today? In a word, the Gerard Butler-starring vehicle fits the framework of such storied [...]
It’s a curious thing, Adam Mason’s “Songbird.” The film, a mid-budget thriller, would have been the type of film in the 1980s to have metaphorically represented the “what if?” if the U.S. and Russia had nuked each other, something I lived through. Films such as “Red Dawn” represented the “what if?” scenario quite effectively, but [...]
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 [...]
