Drama

First Glance: “American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally”

“American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally” is the new film from Michael Polish that tells the story of Mildred Gillars, later given the nickname “Axis Sally”. She was an American broadcaster who shared propaganda over the airwaves for Nazi Germany during World War II. After the war she was taken into custody and put […]

First Glance: “American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally”

Drama

A dark romantic fantasy, in and out of the water — “Undine”

Not everyone remembers that “Undine” or Ondine is a name from mythology, a water nymph of “The Little Mermaid” variety — one with a great gravitas attached to her love life. With or without that knowledge, the opening “break-up” scene in Christian Petzold’s German fantasy based on that myth is dark and intense. Johannes (Jacob […]

Movie Review: A dark romantic fantasy, in and out of the water — “Undine”

Crime

Rope (1948) Review

Time: 81 Minutes Cast: James Stewart as Rupert Cadell John Dall as Brandon Shaw Joan Chandler as Janet Walker Cedric Hardwicke as Mr. Henry Kentley Farley Granger as Phillip Morgan Constance Collier as Mrs. Anita Atwater Douglas Dick as Kenneth Lawrence Edith Evanson as Mrs. Wilson Director: Alfred Hitchcock Two young men, Brandon Shaw (John Dall) and Phillip Morgan […]

Rope (1948) Review

Crime

Dark Woods (Das Geheimnis des Totenwaldes) 2020

“Dark Woods” is a German police procedural that is less about tracking down a serial killer than about the ripple effects of random, senseless violence and the pain of not-knowing what’s happened to a loved one who simply vanishes. There’s mystery in this account of a 30 year-long German case that only dogged persistence by […]

Series Review: German cops hunt a serial killer, and a kidnap victim, in the “Dark Forest (Das Geheimnis des Totenwaldes)”