Drama

First Glance: “In the Heights”

Following the enormous success of “Hamilton” what better time for Warner Brothers to release “In the Heights”. This musical drama is an adaptation of a Tony-winning stage play by Quiara Alegría Hudes and “Hamilton” mastermind Lin-Manuel Miranda. Jon M. Chu of “Crazy Rich Asians” fame directs the film from a screenplay written by Hudes with […]

First Glance: “In the Heights”

Horror

Movie Review: “In the Earth”

Gruesome violence and grisly backwoods “surgery,” blood and stitches and axes and arrows, sharp stone shards left as booby-traps for the unwary dominate “In the Earth.” Kind of what you’d expect from a thriller built around mycorrhizal research deep in the forests of Britain, eh? The pandemic picture from the director of “Free Fire,” “High […]

Movie Review: In a Pandemic, Maybe Nature Won’t Share what’s “In the Earth”

Documentary

Documentary Review — “Long Live Rock”

“Long Live Rock,” a doc about the undying devotion of aging white folks to their favorite metal bands, is littered with tattoo stories, accident stories, mosh pit and crowd surfing tales and a few yarns that begin with “We were drunk, so” or “We were so drunk,” oft told from the front porch of a […]

Documentary Review — “Long Live Rock: Celebrate the Chaos” makes the case for Metal Longevity via its fans

Biography

Movie Preview: “City of Lies”

This Johnny Depp thriller/police procedural was in the can long before Depp’s career imploded with allegations of physical abuse of his ex-wife Amber Heard. This March 19 (April 9 on VOD) story about the cops, what they knew and what they didn’t reveal about the two rappers’ shootings also stars Oscar winner Forest Whitaker, Glenn […]

Movie Preview: The Biggie/Tupac Murders movie — “City of Lies” — finally is headed our way

Drama

Sophie Jones

Sixteen is already a difficult age, with lots of challenges to navigate, but Sophie Jones has just lost her mother, so the regular rhythms of adolescence are tinged with grief and loss, which somehow makes normal rites of passage seem more trivial, yet each holds the potential power to make her forget, even for a […]

Sophie Jones

Comedy

Psycho Goreman (2020)

Psycho Goreman (2020) Little Girl. Big Psycho. If you imagine a riff on E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) but with the kindly alien botanist swapped out for a bloodthirsty intergalactic warlord who’d look right at home in a GWAR music video, you’re on the right track here. Written and directed by Steven Kostanski, The Void (2016), […]

Psycho Goreman (2020)

Documentary

Documentary “Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell”

Sean “Puff Daddy, Puffy, P. Diddy” Combs lays out the mission statement for this new documentary about The Notorious B.I.G. right before the opening credits. “This story doesn’t have to have a tragic ending.” What follows in “Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell,” is an adoring, seriously upbeat portrait of New York rap icon […]

Documentary Review — “Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell”