Dancing is an important element that helps tell the story of love, passion, struggle, pain and even death. It also reveals the identity of the one who performs it and of those who watch.
From director Jamila Wignot, “Ailey” is a beautifully crafted documentary that centers around Alvin Ailey, an African-American dancer, director, choreographer, and activist who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
Quick Thoughts: In the Heights is an absolute blast. It puts a smile on your face, and is proof that stage musicals can be successfully translated to the big screen. Directed by Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians, Step Up 2: The Streets, Step Up 3D), In The Heights kicks off the summer season with […]
In the Heights: An Extremely Fun Musical That Will Put a Smile on Your Face
This recently restored film is an interesting look at George Romero and a controversial subject. The Amusement Park (1973) was a discarded film, originally created by Romero as a commission work for the Lutheran Service Society in Pittsburg, but not widely used and thought lost. The original 16mm reels were sitting in Romero’s basement aka […]
One Day YOU will be old – The Amusement Park review #georgeromero
It’s worth remembering that the script for Groundhog Day was, like, way darker than the final movie; the idea of a day endlessly repeating, and how that might feel for those trapped within it, has got legs. Remakes and sequels haven’t followed, and that’s a good thing, but the potential mileage is obvious, and it […]
Palm Springs
Where were you in 2006? Back in the days of flip-phones and Netscape, you probably couldn’t have it much worse than Michael (Ozark’s Charlie Tahan). He’s working as a campus bus driver, ferrying boozed and drugged up students around a freezing Rochester New York, with the attendant vomit-stains and fractured feelings about life that predictably […]
Drunk Bus
A Quiet Place was perhaps the pinnacle of the sensory deprivation horror of the late 2010s – the last of a plethora of films that tried to reinvest the multiplex with a new sensory immediacy by focusing on characters who had one or many senses disabled. That movement didn’t necessarily feel exhausted by A Quiet […]
Krasinski: A Quiet Place Part II (2021)
Needless to say my expectations for the new Christian Petzold film were through the roof. The German filmmaker’s last two movies, 2014’s “Phoenix” and 2018’s “Transit”, are both snugly among my favorites from the last decade. His latest “Undine” has finally come to the States courtesy of IFC Films. And while it might not pack […]
REVIEW: “Undine” (2021)
Title – Dreamland (2019) Director – Miles Joris-Peyrafitte (As You Are) Cast – Margot Robbie, Finn Cole, Garrett Hedlund, Travis Fimmel Plot – During the heat of the Great Depression, lonely Texan teenager Eugene Evans (Cole) strikes up a friendship with on the run bank robber Allison Wells (Robbie) as the two hatch a plan […]
Film Review – Dreamland (2019)
For some reason, I’m getting requests to review super-hero movies, even though it’s hardly an area of expertise. There are good ones, The Dark Night, Thor: Ragnorok, Iron Man 3. But most of them have a written-by-committee feel; David Mamet described a summer blockbuster movie as being like a themed ‘pageant’, and there’s generally little […]
Spider-man: Far From Home
I’m sure it’s your favourite time of the week, because we’ve got another quiz on the lawn! This week the subject is a little contentious – the subject of taking a bath. Personally, and this is my own personal view, I prefer the act of taking a shower. Kramer appears to agree, and has a […]
Quiz: Bathing In Your Own Filth
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 8.5 out of 10. I know I’ve been on a bit of a ’70s run recently, with the likes of The Long Goodbye, The French Connection, The Parallax View and Marathon Man, so I thought this would be a nice change of gear with recent Netflix series Mindhunter. But, ah ha! I’ve fooled […]
How Mindhunter Makes Conversation More Frightening Than Blood
